Try, if you will, to ignore my least-favorite-kitchen-tile-in-the-world, and focus instead on Le Pingouin. Okay, he’s not French. At all. He just reminds me of a French waiter I once met. Or made up. Nonetheless, he is truly wonderful and we love him. (He puts bubbles in our water and whistles when he’s done!)
This January (month-o-resolutions), I got overwhelmed by the toxic waste that is being produced by our leftover and used-up technology. Yes, the very technology I sit in front of right now. And I don’t know what to do about it.
When we had an old tv to get rid of last year, I searched around and found a company that swears they dispose of e-waste properly. I then gave them a donation to keep up the good work. But do I have any idea if they were the real thing? Or do they just (under cover of darkness) send it all to China to be melted down into rivers of toxins? I have no way of knowing. And that depressed me. Not to mention how much it depressed me to realize I hadn’t turned out to be a reporter for 60 Minutes, hunting down those bad boys.
What the hell does this have to do with a penguin, you ask? (Very good question.) I decided that I simply had to more about things I could control. Places where I could make a difference. Things I had talked about, researched, but never quite made the full commitment to doing.
We already eat pretty seasonally and locally, for the most part. I grow as much as possible of our food, and I grow it organically. We are so unbelievably blessed with fresh local premium produce and the places to buy them. I mean, for god’s sake, it’s California! Right now in the middle of winter, meyer lemons are dripping from the trees around here! (Yes, I know that hurts some of you very deeply right now, walking around in sub-zero temperatures. So I’ll move on.)
Back to The Penguin. One easy, ultimately money-saving thing I can do to make a difference in the world. The Penguin has stopped us from buying bottled carbonated water. And we drink a whole lotta carbonated water. We had long ago stopped buying bottled non-fizzy water and we use stainless steel water bottles instead. With the filtered water coming from our refrigerator door, that was a no-brainer. But giving up our carbonated water? That was too hard. Too much sacrifice. We aren’t noble enough for that.
Turns out we don’t have to be saints to make a difference. Now we have The Penguin, a top of the line carbonator, using glass bottles (because if I was going to do this, I wasn’t going to do it half-way, although it’s a cheaper option and certainly better than buying filled bottles at the store). Our recycle pile has become a mere shadow of its former self. I love it. We love it. We make about 6 to 8 bottles a day. A 20 ounce fill from our refrigerator door and two pushes on le pingouin’s beak and a bottle is ready to drink. 90 seconds, maybe? No plastic to recycle. No gas used driving to the store. Worth giving up the precious countertop inches. The Soda Club (club in name only, no membership required) even has a door-to-door exchange policy for the empty carbonators.
One resolution down, crossed off the list. Without attaining sainthood. And it’s not even February.
