Hi guys!

Repair your clothes! — You know that perfectly made, much-loved but ignored garment in the closet? (Yeah, I’ve posted about this in the past, but it bears repeating. ). Take a good look at it, why you’re not wearing it, and FIX IT! The principle behind it is that you can stay in the sustainability lane by actually wearing all clothing in your wardrobe. Recently, I discovered that the yellow top I made in 2020, which recently reappeared in my color blocking post, wasn’t being worn as much as I wanted — then I remembered that the back closure of the piece was coming apart.

The braid I’d used for the button loops was coming apart. Dang it. Immediately, I cut off the loops made a proper bias tube and replaced just the top loop (the pattern called for one button/loop anyway), removed the other two buttons, went back and sewed one of the buttons on the other side, and we’re done. Looks much better, and I see an uptick in wearing of the yellow pique top this summer. Moral: do not discard good clothing which requires a little bit of fixing.

I had learned this lesson a few years ago, and put some old and loved clothing to work for me. Such as this: Blazer to Vest waaay back in 2014.

Plastic Recycling — Not.

Since I’m focused on earth-saving in this post (and always), do you listen to the UpFirst podcast every morning by NPR? This Sunday, they repeated a 24 minute pod from their sister pod, Planet Money. And, my mind was blown: plastic recycling is not what you think it is. In summary, the plastics we so diligently throw in our recycling bins after checking for the little triangular arrows with a number in it, is mostly not recyclable. There is lots of detail and research presented in the podcast; basically, plastic is dauntingly expensive to recycle, and what blew my mind was that the fossil fuel companies make a killing in selling the raw materials to the plastic industry, but have not put their money toward recycling that same plastic. FYI: plastics are a petroleum based product, and they are pervasive in our lifestyles. On a micro level, I don’t want to lug a heavy glass jar with a gallon of milk, versus a much lighter plastic one? And, it goes up from there — shipping milk in light plastic containers is cheaper than heavy glass (which is also prone to breaking)… and so on. Bringing back the milkman with a daily milk delivery in glass jars sounds kind of quaint but good right now. Heh.

So, why is that triangle logo still embossed on plastic products to make us think it’s recyclable? And, if all that plastic is not being recycled, where is it going?

Give it a listen! Planet Money Podcast

Spring is springing in the houseplants.

To end this “earthy” post, do you look at your indoor plants daily? Here’s my capathea which has recently sprung five new leaves, directly up from the soil. I might have talked to it…

See you in the next post, dear friends! —— Samina