Beauty and the Beast

Beauty...
our family of environmentally-friendly Sigg reusable drink bottles.

Wow...it's been a busy few days. Here’s what I’ve been up to since my last post on Friday:

• Sampling cask wine with my wonderful book club girlfriends.
• Buying fresh veggies and gorgeous sunflowers at the Hub City Farmer’s Market.
• Designing a potager. (pot-ah-zhay; French) A kitchen garden, typically a formal, decorative kitchen garden. We’ve fenced in a section of the backyard so that it’s dog-proof, and I’m trying my hand at a practical but beautiful fall/winter kitchen garden. More on that later this week...
• Starting eight varieties of heirloom lettuces.
• Sowing seeds for fraises des bois, also known as Alpine Strawberries, a culinary treat.
  
• Shopping in the rain for fall veggie transplants, since my seed growing is behind schedule.
• Freezing my butt off after said shopping trip, since I haven’t changed clothes and am soaked.
• Checking my Facebook account obsessively, since I’m among the thousands whose accounts have been undergoing “site maintenance” for more than a week. Still no FB as of today.
• Polluting the environment with a large styrofoam drink cup.

OK, let’s get the bad news out of the way first so I can clear my conscience.

While I did stick to my resolution to give up Diet Coke cans, I’ve failed miserably in my efforts to forgo my favorite burst of caffeine. Today, being a Monday, felt like a good day to start fresh with my resolution...no more DC. Well, that lasted until 9:30 a.m., when I was between errands and my head felt ready to explode.

So, here it is: Yes, not only did I break down and drive through McDonald’s for a large Diet Coke, I completely screwed up--McD’s large drinks are in--gasp!--styrofoam cups. Now, I need to find a station that recycles #6 styrofoam. Yeesh.

Beast...my inappropriate purchase, a Diet Coke housed in styrofoam.

Oh, but it tastes sooooo good. It’s a sickness, I know.

Obviously, I’m not going to win any “environmental woman of the year” award. It’s amazing how many non-ecological things sneak into your life, and in the oddest places.

As I mentioned, we went to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday. Of course, like the good environmental steward I am, I took my reusable bags. It always bothered me, though, that I put my beautiful, sustainably grown vegetables in plastic produce bags that the vendors provide.

While I was talking with one of my farmer friends, I told him about our family project, and I turned down the plastic bag he offered for our Japanese turnips. He pointedly looked at my sunflowers, which I had just purchased from a wonderful flower farmer, with whom I always spend an extraordinary amount of time chatting. Ummmm...my two bunches of sunflowers were wrapped in--gasp!--plastic flower sleeves. Damn. I’m such a hypocrite.

Here’s the problem: I was trying to keep an eye on Mikey and Kristen, who were a little obsessed with touching all of the gorgeous flowers, and when I looked up--my friend had already wrapped the sunflowers in plastic. I just didn’t have the heart to ask him to unwrap them.

I’m such an eco-wimp.

It’s not the first time I’ve been an eco-wimp. A funny thing happened this spring, when I was selling heirloom veggie plants at the Farmer’s Market. The plants that I sold through my business, Garden Delights, were all sustainably grown from seed, pampered by me, and packaged to minimize the impact on the environment. I sold all of the plants in peat pots. Peat pots are terrific because the plant’s roots aren’t disturbed when you transplant it into the garden--you plant the entire pot, the plant is happy because it’s not shocked during the transplanting process, and the pot breaks down in the soil. No worries about my business contributing plastic flower pots to the landfill. I also found an environmentally-friendly method for customers to carry home their purchases, since most people, thankfully, bought several plants: cardboard drink trays, an easy-to-recycle/compost solution to plastic nursery trays.

The irony is: a very sweet customer visited me every Saturday with a gift--a bundle of plastic grocery bags. Most vendors at the Farmer’s Market purchase these t-shirt bags, as they’re known, for their customers who don’t bring reusable bags. Since I was selling plants in peat pots with recyclable trays...I had no use for the bags. But I never told her. I always thanked her for thinking of me, and took the bags home... where they piled up, waiting for me to take them to the recycling station at Publix.

See? Eco-wimp.

I’m trying to be strong and smart about our purchases without being abrasive. I’m curious, though...what might happen if I took my Sigg bottle into McD’s and purchased a drink--without the cup? How would they charge me for the drink? Would I throw off their cup inventory system, since I would be using my own drink container but my order would show a “large” drink purchase? Can you imagine the havoc I would wreck with the McD’s staff? Hmmm. Might be interesting. Stay tuned to see if eco-wimp turns into Environmental Goddess, Champion of the Earth...

Finally, I did promise to share a bit about our cask wine sampling. I bought the Wine Cube, Pinot Grigio, California, purchased at--yes, you remembered--Target. Personally, I thought the wine was pretty good--a little sweet for my taste, but definitely drinkable. According to our book club members--and I asked for honest opinions--they also thought it was good. Of course, I’m not sure how honest these ladies’ reviews were, because they are an awfully nice group. They may have been humoring me, just like I wasn’t very honest with my plastic bag-bearing customer...

So, Peter and I are on the search for another cask to sample. Casks are tricky to find in our area--Publix, Sam’s Club, Target--all have very few choices. We’re going to check out a liquor store later in the hopes of more selections. I’ll let you know what we find.

Ah, my head feels better. Thanks for letting me clear my conscience. I’ll try to behave tomorrow...

Until then, here’s a question for you: What is your favorite eco product?

Juice boxes, part deux.

I’ve found the perfect juice box that is fully recyclable, economical, and manufactured using 85% less packaging than its counterpart. The best part is:

It’s for us. The grownups.

“Cask” wine is the preferred term for the Bag-in-Box (BIB) products we’ve seen creeping onto the shelves of grocery stores and big box retailers like Target. I’ve blatantly ignored them.

Until now.

I’m not a wine snob. Really. Well, maybe a little bit. It’s not as if I really know much about wine, I simply find a few that I like and stick with them. Pinot Noir is my favorite fall/winter wine, and Pinot Grigio is my spring/summer wine. I’m a sucker for label design. If it’s an interesting label, I’ll try it. If it’s about $10, I’ll buy it. If it’s Italian, I’ll love it. See how logically I make my wine selections?

Perhaps my wine expertise stems from my early career days, as a young marketing girl in the big, exciting publishing world. My friend, Katie, and I spent a lot of time discussing lipstick shades when we probably should have been writing press releases or some other nonsense. Anyway, we were thrilled when our company ousted the current male publisher and brought on board a bright, young female publisher. A mentor! Someone to guide us in growing our careers in the (then) male-dominated publishing world!

I remember how impressed I was when, during an author dinner, our new publisher effortlessly ordered wine for the table. “Simi Chardonnay,” she commanded. I was awed by her knowledge of wine.

Well, after numerous dinners where she ordered “Simi Chardonnay” for everyone, I realized that her knowledge of wine was about as vast as her knowledge of publishing. She lasted six months.

In my mind, I equate a lovely bottle of wine, complete with a beautifully designed label, as tasting delicious. Now, you know and I know that’s crap. It’s all about the grape...and the soil where it grew...and the weather...and the harvest time...and...and...and...

Anyway, I just haven’t been able to get myself to buy a box of wine. It seems too collegiate to me, like I’m going to a kegger and the frat boys made sure to have some boxes of wine for the prissy girls who didn’t drink beer. (Note to Tyler: I never drank before I was 21, and you better not either!!! Ahem.)

So, I’ve snubbed the boxes and continued buying bottles of wine. I’m sad to say Peter and I can no longer finish a bottle in one evening without feeling pain the next day. Sometimes we save it, but often the remaining wine gets dumped.

Perhaps it’s time to try a cask. All in the name of research for our family project, of course.

First of all--and some might say most importantly--the engineering of the cask is ideal for people like us. We like a glass of wine with dinner or after the kids go to bed, but we don’t consume the entire bottle. The design of the cask prevents oxidation--the vacuum-sealed bag protects wine from air exposure. As the wine is poured, the bag collapses on itself without letting air reach the wine. The specially designed spigot prevents air from contacting the wine until poured, which ensures the wine’s quality. The packaging preserves the wine’s flavor and freshness for a minimum of six weeks. “The last glass is always as good as the first,” states the Better Wines, Better World website. (www.betterwinesbetterworld.com)

How’s the quality? Approximately 99% of the wine sold in the U.S. is considered table wine--that is, it can be consumed as soon as it is released into the market. Only a small minority of wine is “aged.” For many wine producers, the packaging is the only difference in their bottled versus box wines. The production methods are exactly the same--except packaging.

We’ve all seen the movies where the pretentious actor swirled his wine and declared to the wine steward that it “tasted of cork.” Did you know that approximately 5% of wine is affected by cork taint? That results in the disposal of more than 40 Olympic-sized swimming pools full of wine. An additional benefit of the cask packaging? No cork taint.

What about the value? An average bottle of wine costs approximately $9. An average cask contains the same volume of wine as four bottles. The average price per box? Approximately $19. For good stuff. Yum.

Now, here’s the real kicker and the reason I’m finally thinking about boxed wine: environmental impact.

The Bag-in-Box packaging generates less than 1/2 the carbon footprint of glass wine bottles. The energy used to produce the packaging and to transport the wine is significantly less than required for glass bottles. BIBs result in 85% less packaging waste than glass, eliminating the heavy glass bottle, capsule, neck band, cork, front label and back label. If all of the consume-upon-release wines sold in the U.S. were converted to BIB packaging, we would save 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, which would be the equivalent of removing 250,000 cars from the roads.

Additionally, while glass wine bottles are recyclable, more energy is necessary to recycle four bottles versus one cardboard box. The bag is also recyclable with #7 plastics.

So, in the interest of research, I’m going to pick up some wine. In a box.

I’ll let you know how it is...

And, for my book club friends, I think I might have a little box wine sampling Friday night to get your opinions.

What do you drink? Box or bottle? What would you think if a friend showed up with a box of wine versus a bottle for a party? Would you think “Cheapo” or “Eco-Goddess”? And, would you willingly drink wine from a box?

I’ll let you know what my testers say...

Cheers!