Watch this now.

Really. It's an important 20 mins. If everyone watches it, our collective literacy on critical issues facing us as a species will increase.

Goodness! It's been a week since my last post!

How did that happen? And it's yet another rainy Monday. I'm at the store because Michal slipped and sprained her ankle this morning. Happy to be working the day shift; sad that she is hurt and needs to be off her feet. I have about 8 gazillion things I need to be doing right at this very moment [correspondence that is overdue, orders to place, new jewelry to display, a newsletter to write, an ad to design]. But I did want to just pop in here and say hello. I've actually heard from some folks in the last week who have been reading here and who gave me some positive feedback. Which is very much appreciated, 'cause I rather felt like I was sittin' around talking to myself. So if you do drop by -- do leave a comment. Even just a "hello out there" would be wonderful.

I have several post brewing. So it ought to be well less than a week before I'm back again.

Later luvies...

Rain, rain ...

I don't want it to go away, necessarily. But it does put me in a rather indolent mood. I have beaucoup I could be doing, of course. But very little motivation.

Tomorrow is officially Earth Day. We will have a little free gift for everyone who comes by the store tomorrow [and for the rest of the week, until we run out.] Tomorrow is also, incidentally, the 1 year anniversary of Greater Goods' opening. [Not exactly a coincidence.]

On Wednesday, Michal and I will have a table at the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce Annual Leadshare Luncheon. The event is sold out, and the speaker is one I am eager to hear, so I am looking forward to the event. Both as a marketing opportunity for the store, and in terms of my own personal edification. And, bonus[!], the luncheon is at one of my favorite Loudoun restaurants, Lightfoot. I have got to have produced some kind of reasonably nice-looking flier before then! I have several designed if I can just stop playing with them and actually print them out in sufficient quantity.

And then I could of course be working on my website content... Oh! and I found a handful of Loudoun bloggers that I want to connect with and see if we can't help each other with some cross-promotions... I have ideas!

Off to implement ...

What I'm thinking ...

Quiet afternoon in the store. Just dropped my son off at Little League practice [I was so ridiculously full of goofy joy and pride seeing him in his uniform] and am now back for the evening shift. Spent a good chunk of the day getting organized professionally and personally. Our life is fairly hectic right now in general, and we are hosting our extended family for a Passover seder on Saturday evening. Which requires almost as much shopping and cleaning and cooking and baking as Christmas does in many folks' homes.

Trying to keep my spirits up. Business is so sssslllloooowwww. Folks are just not shopping. I hear it from most of the other local businesses as well. I know that stocking grocery and food is the way to go. Making that happen is a bit more complicated though. There are so many wonderful products I'd love to stock! I recently got wholesale buying information from 3 reusable water bottle companies. I am hoping to be able to choose between them and place an order in the next 2 weeks or so. I'm also a big believer in rain barrels, and am trying to find a cost-effective way to supply them to local folks. Last summer was so dry that Purcellville was on mandatory water restrictions for most of the season.

Well ... I'm off to make some more progress on the website.

Later, luvies...

More on plastic and bisphenol A

Based on draft findings by the National Toxicology Program, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, senior congressional Democrats asked the Food and Drug Administration to reconsider its view that the chemical bisphenol A is safe in products for use by infants and children.

From a Rueters' wire store on Tuesday.

In lieu of me writing ...

Here's a campaign I've joined. Check it out and see if you'd like to as well.

Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles,

the number used in the US every five minutes.

Photo by Chris Jordan. Image found at TreeHugger.

I'm not going to re-write what other people have said perfectly well elsewhere on-line. Even the most cursory of Google searches will result in plenty of anti-plastic info. All I'll do here is summarize the key points and link to the sources.

1. Bottled water is no more pure or healthy than tap water. And in the minority of places in the US where tap water isn't up to standards, inexpensive home filters will help.
2. "Bottled water can cost up to 10,000 times more per gallon than tap water."
3. "Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water required more than 17 million barrels of oil last year – enough fuel more than 1 million U.S. cars for a year - and generated more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide (Source: Pacific Institute)."
4. "Each year more than 4 billion pounds of PET plastic bottles end up in landfills or as roadside litter."

Bottom line: Bottled water costs too much. Too much money. Too much oil. And creates too much garbage.

Want to read more and research it yourself? Here are some places to start:

Think Outside The Bottle

Take Back the Tap, a report by Food and Water Watch

And for an excellent overview of the economic issues from a relatively mainstream and not particularly "green" source: "Message in a Bottle," from the magazine, Fast Company. One of the most chilling quotes from that article:

And in Fiji, a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the U.S. market today, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have safe, reliable drinking water. Which means it is easier for the typical American in Beverly Hills or Baltimore to get a drink of safe, pure, refreshing Fiji water than it is for most people in Fiji.

Runner up most disturbing fact from the same article: "24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi."