Art by Amy Butler

This news is actually almost a year old, but it’s new to me, at least. Amy Butler’s fabulous sewing patterns are now printed on non-chlorine-bleached, 100-percent post-consumer recycled paper from American and Canadian mills.

Amy says:

Both insides and covers will be done on the new stocks. It’s all a part of our continuing effort to improve the lives of our friends, families, and communities.

As if I needed another reason to adore her. (I’ve also heard that she’s investigating organic-cotton options.)

P.S. Have you seen her free lavender eye pillow pattern (PDF)?

Illo by Leo Jung/New York Times

What should humans eat in order to glean the maximal health benefits? According to Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, the formula is simple:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Read the rest of the magazine feature here. (Warning: long, so you might want to clear your calender first.)

Related articles:
1. Michael Pollan vs. Whole Foods
2. Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children
3. World’s Healthiest Foods

Photo by John Clark/Getty Images

Dear World,

J’ADORE being told what to do, so DO please send me e-mails and blog comments that tell (not ask, mind) me to post about your wonderful organization that is just BURSTING with the explosive goodness of a kajillion sparkling gumdrops. Better yet, INSTRUCT me to link to your blog/Web site/MySpace profile etc. because you just know that I will be overwhelmed, nay, CONSUMED, by your scintillating insights that I can only glance intermittently at my screen for fear that my brain will implode from witnessing your godlike glory. (Sometimes you beg, which I must admit gives me a secret thrill deep within my monkey-monkey underpants. I never knew your non-inclusion in a list of someone’s personal online faves was so detrimental to your eggshell self-image, mon petit chou! FORGIVE ME!)

Remember, my sweet, that good manners make the holy trifecta of Baby Jesus, Baby Buddha, and Baby Mohammad cry and make boom boom in their blessed diapers. Netiquette? Bah, I say. BAH! Also, FIE!

And yes, yes, yes, it says “Witch” up there, but DEAREST, it’s only because I never really learned to spell.

Beaucoup kisses,
Me

P.S. In case your sarcasm detector is busted, please do the exact opposite of what this letter says.

Photo by Nick Dolding/Getty Images

No, say it ain’t so! Are indoor-smoking bans actually making things worse for the environment? That’s precisely what Florence Depondt says in E Magazine. After getting “pushed to the great outdoors,” she says, most smokers don’t bother taking the time to properly dispose of them in the trash. (As the witness of countless ciggie flickings onto the street, I can certainly attest to that.) And while the paper and tobacco components of cigarette butts are biodegradable, most cigarette filters are made of cellulose acetate, otherwise known as good ol’ nonbiodegradble plastic. Composed of 12,000 cellulose-acetate fibers, these filters can take between 18 months and 10 years to decompose.

But first, before we get ahead of ourselves, a little history of litter butts:

Cigarette litter has been a problem for as long as people have smoked, and especially since filtered cigarettes became popular in the mid-20th century following the discovery of a cause-effect relationship between smoking and cancer. Estimates from the World Health Organization suggest that close to 1.1 billion people—or one third of all people above the age of 15—smoke. When each of these smokers consumes an average of several cigarettes a day, one can only begin to picture the number of cigarette butts disposed of in streets, parks and other public places every single day. Discarded cigarettes have been reported—prior to any indoor smoking ban—to be as high as 4.5 trillion each year, according to Yahoo News in 1999, and it is estimated that cigarette butts account for 50 percent of all litter in the world.

(Emphasis is mine.)

Although new smoking bans have led to cleaner air, concerned citizens and business owners have noticed a “dramatic increase in cigarette litter,” especially outside bars and restaurants where smokers light up.

The problem with carelessly discarded butts is that they contain 4,000 chemicals, such as hydrogen, cyanide, and arsenic, which persist in the environment long after even the filters have decomposed. And because many cigarette butts are flushed down storm drains (by rain and other water runoff) long before a street cleaner gets to them, these butts soon find themselves winding their merry way into rivers and oceans, where they foul up the water and endanger aquatic life.

Toxological data has shown that chemicals from discarded cigarette butts are capable of leaching into surrounding waterways. One particular problem is that these leached chemicals are deadly to the water flea Daphnia magna, a small crustacean at the lower end of, but crucial to, the aquatic food chain.

The saddest environmental impact of cigarette butts is their role in the deaths of thousands of marine mammals and birds every year. These wild creatures mistake the butts for food. Once ingested, the butts can lead to starvation or malnutrition if they block the intestinal track, and can also prevent breathing by blocking vital air passages. In 2003, the United Nations International Maritime Organization reported that cigarette litter adversely affected 177 species of marine animals and 111 species of seabirds through ingestion.

(Emphases are mine.)

Obviously, smokers need to be educated, but how efficacious will this be when images of bald cancer patients breathing through a hole in their trachea haven’t deterred them? Depondt also refers to a piece in the 1999 issue of the Tobacco Control Journal, in which researchers called for additional taxes on tobacco products to go towards environmental campaigns and clean-up efforts. Personally, I’m a huge fan of the cigarette-litter fine. which Depondt says should be “visibly enforced and implemented as part of a comprehensive anti-cigarette litter campaign.” Heck, need enforcers? Sign me up! I’m Singaporean; I know how to work a fine.

As part of my own anti-smoking crusade out on the streets, I’ve taken to turning to the hub and saying, in a loud voice, “Hey, I heard that smoking makes your penis shrink.”

The hub took this a little bit further the other day, as two women puffed their lives away in front of us: “I heard that smoking MAKES YOUR BOOBS FALL OFF.”

And I fell in love with the man all over again.

Related articles:
1. Smoking Ban Without Borders
2. Read the Pre-nup Again
3. Dana Reeve, 1961-2006

(Part of my Green This House program.)

This is a common lure that printer manufacturers use on unsuspecting consumers—sell the hardware below market value (even if it means losing money), then rake in a continuous stream of profits through consumables such as toner and ink. In fact, the Wall Street Journal says that Hewlett-Packard makes more than two-thirds of its profits selling printer cartridges. (An average of 1.3 billion ink cartridges are sold each year, generating $30.1 billion in revenue in 2005.) Considering a color ink cartridge for my el cheapo $50 HP Deskjet costs over $20 and a black one $18, is it any wonder that cartridge-refill services are gaining in popularity, despite the obvious ire of companies such as HP and Lexmark?

My dad and I don’t have a lot in common—I’m still working on getting him to give up his SUV—but one trait solidifies our genetic bond: we’re both extremely cheap. He’s such a tightwad, in fact, that he became a stealth greenie entirely by accident, injecting off-brand ink back into his empty cartridges and saving them (and their potential replacements) from landfill purgatory, at 50 percent of the cost. Plus, it isn’t just the cartridges themselves that are an environmental polluter—printer firms have been incorporating small computer chips into their cartridges so that cartridges by other manufacturers can’t be used in a particular brand of printer. The chips also make refilling impossible because they can’t be reset, in a way almost reminiscent of “suicide seeds,” which in turn are such a repugnant idea that a special VIP section in hell has been reserved for the person who first suggested them. (The EU has banned the use of these smart chips.)

Being the klutz that I am, I suspected that DIYing this would render me a walking ink stain, so my little stingy (and hippie) heart leaped when I found out that Walgreens refills your empties. I had my black-ink cartridge pumped back full of ink for a little over $9—half of what HP was going to charge me. Walgreens offers a 100-percent satisfaction guarantee. And if you bring in the little cartridge baggie for reuse the next time you go in, you get 10 free digital photos. (The baggie was further slipped into a cardboard mailer, but I returned it to the guy at the counter for him to reuse.)

Although stories about mixed results abound, after a couple of test prints, I couldn’t tell the difference in quality, but then again, I’m not a stickler.

Other refill-station options include CartridgeWorld and OfficeMax, and if you prefer a more hands-on approach, a Google search will stand you in good stead.

Unless you really have to impress someone with your printouts (I can only think of outgoing docs and the like), use the draft mode on your printer preferences and save yourself some ink and/or toner by making your cartridges last twice or even three times as long. Double-sided printing will also cut down on paper waste, while providing a nice chunk of change over time that you can put to better use. Like catnip.

Photo by Philippe McClelland/Getty Images

Blame Summer.

Six weird/unknown things about me:

1. When I was at Oktoberfest in Munich in 1999, all I had to drink were a couple of sodas. Which was a good thing because my fellow exchange students wound up COMPLETELY BLOTTO and we had a train to Cologne to catch later that night.

2. I don’t like the taste of alcohol, which means I never drink anyway.

3. I spent 10 years at an all-girls Catholic school. Contrary to what my husband wishes, we did not have slumber parties that featured naked pillow fights.

4. After 11 years of forced Chinese lessons, I can still barely get by in the language.

5. Because of the influence of my older brother¹, I’m a bigger sci-fi and comic-book geek than I admit to being. I regularly outgeek the hub, who despite a lifetime’s obsession with Star Trek, disagreed with me when I insisted that Number One in the original Trek pilot was played by Majel Barrett. He said he was thrown off by the hair. Sure.

6. I rarely have only a passing interest in a subject matter, which means that I know more than the average bear should about mythology (mostly Greek), folklore, Robin Hood, Sylvia Plath, Supergirl, the Tudors, paleontology, and fortean phenomena, among other very random things. I also have a particular obsession with haunted houses and cupcakes. I blame all of this on my mental illness.

I tag Liz and Rebecca.

Related article:
1. Oh Noes a Meme!

¹Whom I love, but apparently not enough to knit him a Doctor Who (Tom Baker) scarf. Because I’m not THAT crazy.

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