Finally - Recycling for Brita filters!

This is the one you've all been waiting for! Brita filter recycling! Of course we've all wondered if it is possible, and now it is.

This came to my inbox via a Brita newsletter:

1: Dry your filter by skaing off any excess water and letting stand to dry at least 3 days.

2. Wrap the filter in a plastic grocery bag.

3. Find a drop off location on the Preserve website. A lot of Whole Foods are now participating in this program and have drop boxes.

If you are not near a drop off site, you can send your dry wrapped filter, packed in a box to : Preserve Gimmie 5 823 NYS Route 13, Cortland NY 13045

Yeehaw!

Go with the FLOW

Another must see movie! If you drink, bathe, cook and wash with water (and I know you do) go out and rent "FLOW" - For Love Of Water.

One of the most important issues in the world today hardly gets any press - water rights, the privatization of water and the lack of clean drinking water for a large portion of the population. Without water, we have no life.

Living in New England, especially after the most rainy spring in decades, it is easy to take water for granted. Only for a short while in high summer do droughts occasionally occur, and towns limit lawn watering to every other day. Someone living in Arizona or California should naturally have a bit more respect for water - although the way they build golf courses out there, it is not always the case.

But no matter how rainy or dry it is where you live, everyone should have a very healthy respect for water. Funny enough, the night I watched the movie our tap water turned brown due to the town flushing out the pipes. Instantly, we did not want to drink or bathe in the light brown water, and happened to have two bottles of water in the fridge we could drink in the meantime. But this is where the problem lies - for although your area may be rich in water, many companies are bottling water, common tap water, and selling it all over the world at very high prices. Folks in Minnesota noticed their streams, creeks and ground water levels decline when Nestle Waters moved in and started pumping hundreds of thousands of gallons a day. In essence, Nestle is taking water for free that should belong to the people, and selling it back to them at exorbitant prices.

But that is not even close to the worst case- multinational companies that privatize water systems are actually depriving people of water around the world, selling substandard water back to people who can't afford to pay for it. These people must then resort to using polluted water, and many of them die from water bourne bacteria. In Bolivia there were riots for many years against the water privitazation that was forced upon them by the world bank - just a few years ago the people won and were given back the right to control their own water.

In Peru, strikes against the privatization of water have been frequent - in fact, on our honeymoon my husband and I saw one in the square in Cusco. Many farmers and peasants, a lot of them looking quite nervous, marched in the Plaza de Armas. Police and soldiers lined the edges of the Plaza, keeping an eye on the march. The people put rocks in the road on the way to the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu to stop tourists from getting to the site and draw attention to their cause. Thankfully (for us), the strike was only one day long and we were able to travel to Olantaytambo and start our Inka Trail adventure the next day. We did see the remnants of the rocks in the street however, and out bus driver really had to be careful and swerve around debris still in the road. Hopefully, the power of the people can stop the impending destruction that one of these water companies would cause.

Water is such an important part of every human being's life, and should be free and clean for all as nature intended. See FLOW and you will be reminded of what is most important in life - and makes up 70% of YOU!

Self Flushing Toilets - use where appropriate

We are going skiing tomorrow! Yay!

Which brings up a good point about toilets. A ski resort is NOT the appropriate place for self flushing toilets. Especially in the ladies room. Consider this scenario:

You are in your ski gear and need to pee. After waiting in the long line of ladies, you finally enter your small private booth, facing the toilet.

You remove your gloves and jacket, and turn towards the door to hang it up and lock the door.

The toilet senses your movements and flushes.

You turn back to the toilet, use some t.p. to make your "nest" on the seat, and hope the blowing heaters don't send the paper flying.

You turn back towards the door, unbuckle your snowpants and slide them down, unbutton your pants and slide those down, realize your snowpants just knocked the paper nest off the seat, shuffle back around to make another nest, then carefully turn around again to avoid knocking the paper off again.

The toilet flushes again.

Finally, you sit, do your business as efficiently as possible, holding the back of your snowpants away from the toilet bowl, because eew, you don't want them to touch it.

You stand up, wipe up and pull up all the layers.

No flush.

Put on your hat and gloves, coat, turn back toward the toilet and wave your hands around.

No flush.

Finally, because you know someone is coming in right behind you, you press the manual button and flush your little gift into the sea.

Three flushes, all because a dumb computer can't determine when there is a load in the potty of not. Maybe that's what the sensors should be for, instead of just someone coming and going and turning around!

Any other suggestions of appropriate of inappropriate self flushing toilet applications? I'd love to hear!

Water Filters

Going back to the first-ever groovygreensisters post (about water)... I used to be a huge water snob. Water is the only thing I drink (seriously - no milk, juice, coffee... just water!). For years, I hated the taste of the tap water in my area, so I bought gallons of bottled water.

Even though I recycled every gallon jug, I did start to feel bad about my impact a year or so ago, so my husband and I started buying those Brita water filters that go right on the tap. That has been working out great, except now I am starting to feel guilty about throwing out this huge plastic filter thingie every three months or so. They are not recyclable, as far as I know. At least with the gallon water jugs, I could recycle those... but my Brita filters will be in a landfill forever. Does anyone know of any tap water filters that are recyclable, or at least have less of an impact on the planet?

Water, water, everywhere

Welcome to Groovy Green Sisters! I recently took the pledge to "Break the Bottled Water Habit" at one of my favorite sites http://www.newdream.org/.

It is quite an eye opener to see how wasteful (and expensive!) it is to buy bottled water. And while it can be a great alternative to buying a soda when you are thirsty, with a little planning ahead, it is also just as easy to bring your own water from home!

We like to filter our water with a Brita, then fill up a gallon jug or two and keep it in the car on long trips. There tons of nice water bottles to choose from - I have the traditional plastic Nalgene, but if you are still worried about chemicals from the plastic leaching into the water, a stainless steel bottle like SIGG www.mysigg.com/ should do the trick.

At work we have a water filtration system instead of water bottles - it looks just like the bottom half of a water cooler, with the hot and cold spigots, but there are no heavy bottles to change. http://www.atlaswatersystems.com/

I was sad to learn that our 'local' water, Poland Spring "What it means to be from Maine," is now owned by Nestle Waters North America - actually a European company. They also bought up a bunch of other local water bottling plants. So... you buy water from Maine and a corporation in Europe is profiting from it - that's just strange.

I have been wanting to check out this new movie FLOW - in theaters now... hopefully I can catch it before it goes out! http://flowthefilm.com/ It chronicles that availability of fresh water on our planet and looks fascinating!

How have you changed your water habits?