More weird crap for the compost heap

Yes, those are balloons. According to the package, they are “100% natural biodegradable,“ so we’ll toss them in the compost heap (minus the plastic package) and see what happens.

At first I assumed this was another example of Corporate America jumping on the “Go Green” bandwagon. But it turns out that balloon litter is a big problem because of all those balloon releases at public events. Eventually what goes up must come down. Balloon fragments are commonly found among the debris gathered during the Center for Marine Conservation’s International Coastal Cleanup.

The balloon industry has been pushing biodegradable rubber balloons for years in an effort to improve its image among environmentalists, arguing in a widely cited article on the Internet that  balloon litter is “a disintegrating issue.”

Well, these used balloons are going in the compost today. We’ll see how they do against the  Sun Chips bag, which has a five-week head start. And our compost, by the way, is gaining momentum. When I turned the pile on a frosty morning earlier this week, I saw steam.

Price check reveals the bigger picture

I went looking for small trash can liners at Walmart yesterday, just to see what those cost these days. As I suspected, the four-gallon bags cost nearly 10 cents each -- which just happens to be my target price for both 13-gallon tall kitchen bags and 30-gallon standard trash bags.

What did surprise me, though, was how hard it was to even find the four-gallon size on the shelf. While large kitchen trash bags took up several feet of shelf space -- representing four brands, at least three different styles, and varying numbers of bags per box -- I could find only one box of the small bags, made by Glad. (Further searching eventually turned up a roll of cheaper bags on the bottom shelf.)

Obviously, despite the campaign to get everybody to switch to canvas shopping bags, most people who shop at this store still reuse plastic shopping bags to line their small wastebaskets. If Walmart ever succeeds in convincing customers to provide their own bags, you can bet it will have pallets of Great Value brand four-gallon trash bags waiting in the wings.

The insecurity tax in action

I almost never buy birthday cards, preferring to let the kids make them instead. It saves me money, and it’s a homeschool art project for them. But I needed to send gift cards out to a couple of nephews on a tight deadline yesterday. (Though one was several weeks late, the other stood an outside chance on arriving on the actual birthday.) Under the circumstances, I decided to cave in and buy a couple of cards.

I found a couple of workable 50-cent cards at Walmart. Then doubt set in. I don’t see these boys as often as my sister’s kids, and they don’t have much opportunity to view my frugality in the context of what I hope to be my other finer points. If several months go by and their only reminder of me is a cheap gift or birthday card, what impression do they form?

The reality, of course, is that they go for the gift card inside without giving the card a glance.  But I couldn‘t help taking a look at the midrange cards, just to compare. I wound up with a pair of “nephew” cards, one with a wisecrack about the kid being cooler than his dorky parents, and the other with a picture of a cute dog on the cover. I spent $5.00 on the cards -- a $4 insecurity tax for not sticking to my principles.

And the stupid thing is, in retrospect, I think one of the cheap cards would’ve actually been a better fit.

Making a chip bag disappear (or not)

The "World's First 100% Compostable Chip Package" is supposed to break down in 14 weeks. It didn't take nearly that long to break down my resistance to buying a bag of SunChips, despite the fact that they're priced way above my usual 10 cents-per-ounce standard for salty snacks.

I finally caved in and bought a bag on March 19, less than a week after I saw an online ad promoting the new bags. The chips are, after all, delicious. And I was curious to see how the bags would perform. The answer: In our case, not so hot. At least, not so far.

This may be as much a reflection on the poor internal combustion of our compost heap as anything else, but  when we dug up our SunChips bag yesterday after 31 days submerged in a stew of old oak leaves, weeds and food scraps, it looked ... well, like a filthy but otherwise uninjured chip bag.

But the test continues. Not just of the bag, but of our admittedly less-than-scientific composting skills. Before dunking the bag back under yesterday, we added a big dose of grass clippings and gave everything a good stir, which may help.

Plastic tumbleweeds

I saw another shopping bag blowing across the street the other day. Reminded me of a tumbleweed. Which made me wonder: How many wind-surfing plastic bags are on the move in this country at any given moment, versus how many tumbleweeds?

This is the kind of question that makes you want to upgrade to the Star Trek version of the Internet, because my superficial web surfing didn’t turn up any easy answers. (Though I did discover that some tumbleweeds are radioactive. Turns out that before they take flight they sink really deep roots, some of which tap into nuclear test and waste sites out West.)

Global economic blowblack

The other day at work I edited a wire story saying that furniture prices are going up because of higher labor prices in Asia, along with increases in Pacific shipping rates. That strikes me as a good thing. Maybe once the planet’s supply of cheap human labor is exhausted, we can all get down to the business of figuring out how to live smarter without taking advantage of each other.

Settling for freebies

The good news: Got a free reusable shopping bag the other day. The bad news: It’s so ugly I haven’t been able to bring myself to use it. Somehow Tony the Tiger just doesn’t look right in muted colors.

Because of my innate reluctance to buy stuff, I’m always settling for whatever I eventually stumble across that’s cheap or free or sometimes, just there. This explains our kitschy dinner plates and those Tommy Hilfiger shirts I wore around the house but didn’t want to actually be seen in. (Luckily, I’ve lost enough weight they don’t fit anymore anyway).

I justify this practice by thinking of ugly-but-useful free crap as a “first draft” item. When I come across a suitable, more pleasing replacement, I strike the offending object from our lives.

The thing is, despite my past grumbling on this subject, I really do want to test drive a shopping bag. Especially after I saw yet another plastic bag blowing cross the park yesterday, no doubt on its way to join its friends in that enormous floating plastic-trash island that roams the Pacific.

So I think what I’ll do is try this out on my next stop at an Aldi store, where you’ve got to pay for grocery bags if you don’t bring your own. I hardly ever see anybody I know there anyway.