Shop Small! This Saturday and Every Day...

Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, and with it comes a barrage of incredible deals from big-box stores, impersonal internet giants, and technological empires. In recent years, the holiday of Thanksgiving and its gratitude-centric aims (albeit ones that often cloud the deeply troubling roots of a holiday steeped in the mistreatment of native peoples whose oppression continues to this day) have been overshadowed by capitalistic, consumer-driven bargain shoppers manically sussing out the best deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. However, in between Friday and Monday, there is Saturday (as well as Sunday, but for the purposes of this post, we will focus on Saturday).

And on this Saturday, as an alternative to stampeding humans to death in the quest for cheap goods and staring bleary-eyed at a screen while you max out your credit card, my hope—and the hope of small businesses everywhere—is that you’ll get out and shop small instead.

Shopping small may not have the same mega-advertised savings and benefits as these other shopping-focused days of the holiday season, however, it does have the often undervalued and immensely impactful benefit of supporting small businesses to help communities thrive.

According the the U.S. Small Business Administration, as of 2018, 99.9% of US businesses are small businesses, which currently employ more than 47.5% of the private workforce in the U.S. and account for 1.9 million new jobs annually. Thus, small businesses are an integral part of the economic landscape.

As explained on SmallBusiness.com, Small Business Saturday was created in 2010 under the sponsorship of American Express in response to Black Friday. Since then it has grown into a national movement, garnering celebrity endorsements from the likes of Karlie Kloss and Hamilton creator Lin Manuel-Miranda (of whom I am a huge fan, by the way).

It’s celebrated in the U.S. on the last Saturday in November, and has gained serious momentum since its inception nearly a decade ago, with participation rates rising from 44% of the population in 2010 to a projected 77% in 2019.

Shopping small, of course, has an environmental benefit by reducing fossil fuel use in transportation to/from stores (both for the consumers and the goods they are consuming). Small businesses are often accessible to their local customer base by means of walking, biking, and public transit, generally offer a larger amount of locally sourced items, belong to the community and therefore act in the best interest of the local community (both environmentally and otherwise), utilize land less destructively than big-box stores, and sell higher quality products that tend to be more durable and therefore last longer. 

In addition to being more environmentally friendly and sustainable, shopping locally offers a multitude of other benefits, according to Forbes’ 5 Benefits of Shopping Locally on Small Business Saturday: 
-Shopping locally can revitalize communities as local businesses reinvest a higher percentage of their income into their communities than chains —nearly twice as much. You can learn more about this so-called "Multiplier Effect" courtesy of the American Independent Business Alliance.
-Supporting local businesses can also help create more local jobs.
-Local offerings can be diverse and are often unique from the routinely and uniformly stocked products available at chain stores.
-It can also strengthen local networks and provide services perfectly tailored to your unique cultural, social, and environmental geography.
-When local businesses are vibrant and thriving, it can increase real estate values in the area.

Of course, all of these benefits hold true not only on Small Business Saturday, but on every day of the year. If you’re in the practice of ordering countless items online or buying exclusively from big-box stores and chains, let this Small Business Saturday be a trial run of a more sustainable, community-driven, and intentional pattern of purchasing going forward that will benefit you, your community, and the environment.

For those of you rolling your eyes and scoffing at the idea of regressing in the midst of an ever-evolving digital age, you can of course utilize technology in your efforts to shop small. For example, some sellers on Amazon are small-business people. Amazon Handmade, in particular, offers a platform for artisans to sell their handcrafted wares. Likewise, you can search by location on Etsy to purchase items made by someone in your community. You can also utilize Google’s shopping feature to search for products available nearby.

Whether you find local products online or on the streets, shopping locally is just one of the many steps on our journey toward greener living. So, next Saturday head to your local cafe, peruse your local bookstore, and shop at your local grocers and boutiques. Source your goods and the gifts you’re buying for others locally. And, as always, let me know how it goes in the comments section below.

~Sam

Greener Living's Holiday Gift Guide

It’s officially that time of year again: snow is falling, Hallmark and Lifetime are showing 24/7 Holiday movies, and Thanksgiving is nearly upon us.  With the colder weather, the cozier clothes, and the impending Holiday season, comes the seemingly inevitable capitalism-driven consumerist, gift-centric expectations and traditions. A dark underbelly of the holidays, of sorts, this year I encourage you to put your dollars to greener uses by giving the gift of sustainability.

First and foremost, by shopping at thrift stores, Habitat ReStores, or Play-it-again sporting good stores, you can help reduce the environmental impact of gift-giving and give clothes, cabinets, and equipment a second life.

Furthermore, be sure to revisit my previous post ‘Tis the Season… for tips on sustainable gift wrapping and other best-practices to combat the excessive waste of the holidays.

Within my multitude of blog posts, I have highlighted numerous sustainable products that individuals can utilize and  incorporate to eliminate waste in their daily lives. However, many of these products would also make a great gift! I write today to highlight these products and to generate a list of ideas for sustainable gift giving.

If you know someone who washes their clothes, consider gifting them a Cora Ball and revisit my post on Greening Your Laundry Routine to learn more.

Consider gifting someone a compost tumbler or other collection system with some resources and options outlined in my post on Household Composting.

When giving a gift card, consider sending an electronic copy to avoid the plastic waste.

For those of you looking for a practical gift, reusable dishcloths, handkerchiefs, or cloth napkins can add some festive flair and much-needed ecological upgrades to everyday routines.

As featured in my four-part plastics purge series, there are numerous products that make great gifts that can help eliminate sources of disposable, single-use plastics in our life. These include reusable straws, reusable shopping bags / non-plastic produce bag alternatives, reusable water bottles, reusable food storage containers and ziploc bags, and reusable cutlery sets.

For the warm-beverage consumers in your life, consider gifting them a reusable coffee cup / travel mug, and do your part to help combat the Coffee Cup Crisis. If someone you know uses a Keurig on the daily, consider gifting them reusable k-cups (an eco-friendly alternative to the disposable single-use options).

Additionally, you can seek out “green” gifts that speak to the specific interests and hobbies of the people in your life. For example, does someone you know love to bake? Reusable silicone baking cups are an inexpensive, fun, and thoughtful gift idea.

The possibilities are endless! If you’ve already been journeying down the path toward greener living, there is no better time than the holidays to invite others to journey along with you!

Do you have other sustainable gift ideas? Tips for reducing waste during the holidays? Please share in the comments section below! As always, best of luck on your journey toward greener living, and I hope you have a happy, sustainable, holiday season!

~Sam

Save the Birds!: How to Prevent Window Strikes

It began like any other morning. I was bundled up in some cozy pajamas enjoying a mug of tea in my kitchen, when all of a sudden I heard a sickening thud. A bird had flown straight into the window. The sudden and unexpected sound set my heart racing. As I cautiously peered out the window to assess the damage, I fully expected to see the dead body of the small, fragile bird crushed upon impact. The bird was there, but appeared to be alive. Breathing heavily and staying where it was below the window, it was likely in shock. When I checked back later, the bird had flown away. However, some decidedly morbid research on the internet informed me that the bird would likely die from internal bleeding.

This bird, sadly, is just one of the up to one billion birds that die annually in the United States from striking glass windows, according to the American Bird Conservancy.

While this is one of the most costly threats to bird populations, the American Bird Conservancy also notes that it is a relatively easy problem to solve. Their site lists a variety of relatively inexpensive homeowner products that can prevent bird strikes. For the more frugal and less formal among us, myself included, there exist some simple DIY prevention methods, as outlined in Bird Watcher’s Digest. These methods include suspending tree branches in front of frequently struck windows, applying window decals, stickers, or tape, and suspending something unusual and bright like a pie pan, aluminum foil, or holiday decorations in front of the window. The general premise behind these strike prevention methods is to break up the reflective ability of large expanses of glass.

Generally speaking, windows readily reflect their surroundings, thereby creating the false impression of continued forests or open skies, which birds unknowingly seek to fly into.

While not technically a form of waste in our daily lives, I was inspired by this unfortunate encounter to educate others on ways to prevent window strikes and hopefully save more birds from meeting a similar fate. After all, living more harmoniously with the natural world is undoubtedly a facet of greener living.

And so, after researching bird strikes and common methods of prevention, I opted for the DIY route, fashioning some seasonally-appropriate snowflake window decals. I thought that paper snowflakes would be an easy and quick fix to my newfound bird problem. However, it turns out that despite my many winters in grade school crafting these delightful paper snowflakes, I simply could not remember how to make one. Admittedly humbled, I looked up a YouTube tutorial and had to follow it step by step, ultimately producing several lackluster albeit acceptable snowflakes. I then taped these up to the windows in question, spacing them apart in a way that would break up seemingly expansive reflections.

The goal with the decals is to disrupt the reflected portion of the window, so that the spaces available seem unappealingly claustrophobic or too small to fly through.
Although initially infuriating, the snowflake crafting was actually fun and nostalgic. I used recycled paper from discarded print-outs (reduce, reuse recycle!), thereby turning waste into tasteful and functional crafts.

If there is a window at your home that is prone to bird strikes, I highly recommend crafting decals for all the seasons, be it snowflakes in the Winter, flowers in the Spring, leaves in the Fall, and perhaps suns or some other seasonally-themed idea for the Summer. You can also craft bird silhouette cut outs as an added deterrent (birds feel threatened by other birds).

The Humane Society of the United States lists some of the aforementioned prevention methods in addition to more ideas such as using window screens, external shutters, and interior shades or curtains to prevent bird strikes. 

Birding is one of the most popular and fastest-growing outdoor hobbies. Many individuals enjoy simply watching birds from their windows. Even if you don’t birdwatch yourself, you’d probably prefer not to have birds crashing into your windows and littering the perimeter of your house with their corpses.

Regardless of your affinity for birdwatching, bird-proofing your windows can offer low-cost, high-impact options to exist less destructively in our world. It is with this goal in mind, that I encourage you to get your craft on and help conserve the population of birds currently losing their lives to preventable window strikes.

Additionally, it is always encouraged to convene more regularly with the natural world, so if you or someone you know would like to get more involved in bird watching, check out Audubon’s tips for How to Start Birding. Audubon’s website is also a great resource for learning more about birds in general.

Have you had a bird strike your window before? Are you excited about the prospect of crafting or installing deterrents? Do you love birding / observing wildlife? Whatever your stance, I hope this post encourages you to take preventative measures before the bird strikes occur. As always, feel free to share your thoughts, concerns, questions, and progress in the comments section below. Best of luck on your journey toward greener living.

~Sam

Stop Before You Pop: An Exposé on Sustainable Popcorn Making

We’ve all been there: waiting eagerly as the final seconds tick down on the microwave timer, the pleasant little pops are few and far between, and the aroma of freshly-popped popcorn is wafting tantalizingly in the air. Upon hearing the long-awaited beep beep beep signaling the popcorn’s completion, we snatch the bag out, careful not to burn ourselves as we pour the contents into a bowl and tromp out to resume our position on the couch, a movie queued and ready to go.

In the frivolity of popcorn, it can be all too easy to simply overlook the waste we generate. However, as with most products of convenience, microwave popcorn has an underlying dark side of wastefulness. From the cardboard box the bags are packaged in, to the plastic that wraps each individual bag, to the bags themselves, microwave popcorn leaves much to be desired in the realm of sustainability.

Luckily for us zero-waste warriors out there, there exists more sustainable alternatives that allow us to have our popcorn and eat it too, free from the single-use, throwaway culture that pervades much of our lives today.

The first of these alternatives is the classic stove-top popping option. All you need is a stove top, a pot, some oil, and, of course, kernels. You heat the oil, add the kernels, cover the pot, and allow the kernels to pop over the heat. It’s a simple process, and although it takes about 10 minutes to prep and pop (admittedly longer than the average 2-3 minute microwave popcorn timeline), it has the added benefit of allowing you to customize your popcorn in the type of oil and seasonings you use.

A simple internet search of “how to make stove-top popcorn” will yield a myriad of easy to follow instructions and popcorn recipes. For your convenience and as a good starting point, I recommend checking out Elise Bauer’s Perfect Popcorn recipe.

For those of you who feel put off and disenfranchised by this 10-minute endeavor that produces an oily pot to clean, or for those of you in staunch support of utilizing a microwave, you can invest in a $14-$16 silicone air popper, such as the Colonel Popper . This product is available on Amazon, but I would recommend checking your local kitchen supply store in the hopes of shopping locally before ordering online.

I ordered this popper as a gift for my popcorn-loving dad back in June. Having since returned home, I have used it on multiple occasions with great success. Using a silicone air popper, such as the Colonel Popper, entails measuring out an amount of kernels, mixing those kernels in oil or  melted butter (I always choose butter), adding salt or other seasonings as desired, dumping the kernels/butter/seasoning into the popper, covering with the lid, and putting the whole thing in the microwave for about 3 minutes. You can eat the finished product right out of the bowl and then simply give it a wash‒no waste needed!

In addition to reducing waste in utilizing reusable pots / silicone poppers as opposed to single-use, plastic-encased bags, stove top or air popper alternatives have the added benefit of offering kernels packaged in recyclable containers. As with most products, buying kernels in bulk is the most sustainable, and often most economical, option. I happened to have Orville Redenbacher kernels on hand, and have been enjoying them just fine. Best of all, when I’m done I can recycle the container they came in. However, sourcing local kernels in glass or reusable containers is a step better. Even better than that, you could endeavor to grow your own popcorn kernels for ultimate self-sufficiency.

For an astonishingly thorough review of different brands of kernels, check out Food Shark Marfa’s Best Popcorn Kernels.

I was unable to find hard facts on the exact amount of waste generated from microwave popcorn each year. However, according to The Popcorn Institute, which promotes and performs 85% of all popcorn sales within the US, Americans consume 15 billion quarts of popcorn annually. With the invention of microwave popcorn in the 1980s and more than 80% of US households currently owning microwaves, one can assume that a significant amount of household popcorn is coming from microwave popcorn bags, thereby generating massive amounts of non-recyclable waste in the process.


In writing this week’s post on popcorn, my hope was not to diminish people’s zest for and consumption of this tasty, nutritious treat, but to instead promote more sustainable popping practices. Ultimately, in addition to reducing waste, popping your own corn is much less expensive and often healthier (microwave popcorn bags are lined with chemicals that have some substantial and as-of-yet unknown health impacts), than buying microwave popcorn or even pre-popped bags of popcorn, making it a win-win-win for your wallet, health, and our planet.

So, the next time you find yourself hankering for some popcorn, try these home-popping, lower waste alternatives. As always, let me know how it goes in the comments section below, and best of luck on your journey toward greener living.

~Sam