October 24, 2021
A Good Home for Your Extra Supplies
Friends of the Farms is building three Tiny Homes for island farmers at the Morales Farm in collaboration with Clark Construction, Coates Design and Housing Resources Bainbridge. According to the FotF newsletter, "The goal of reHOME Morales is to build beautiful, functional, affordable living space from repurposed, recycled, and orphaned materials." 

Are you remodeling or building new and have a surplus? Check out this materials list to see if you have something they could make use of. If you do, take a photo of it, write a brief description, then send an email to the project coordinator here.

Even if you are not remodeling, you might have something from the wishlist lying around and could give it to this worthy cause. Read more about the reHome project here.
Kiddie Costume Reuse
The community costume drop-off took place in September. Now you can shop for free for a child-sized, new-to-you costume at KiDiMu's annual Hallowe'en Costume Swap. The "store" has been open each Saturday in October. The final day will be this Saturday, October 30. They have even extended the hours to 9am-4pm. Go here for more details.
Buy Nothing Creators in the New York Times
Bainbridge Island residents Liesl Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller, founders of the immensely popular "Buy Nothing" groups on Facebook, recently had their project featured in the New York Times. Just check out the over 700 effusive remarks in the comments section to see how grateful everyone is for our neighbors' brilliant idea.
Some people wrote that the only reason they are on Facebook is because of Buy Nothing. For this reason, Rebecca and Liesl have developed a Buy Nothing app, which just completed its beta testing phase. (Bainbridge was one of its participant communities.) If you want to be on the waitlist for the app when it goes worldwide, sign up here.
In 2020, Liesl and Rebecca wrote a book about the origins of Buy Nothing that is also a great primer for the many ways to reduce and reuse individually and collectively. Read this NYT review of The Buy Nothing, Get Everything Plan, which is available at Eagle Harbor Books.
Kudos to Peninsula
Peninsula Paint Company on Hildebrand Lane not only participates in Washington State's Paint Care reuse/recycle program (more info here), they also have a shelf of various quart to gallon-sized “mistinted” paint (mixed for clients but not bought by them) at a greatly reduced price. What a fantastic reuse deal for customers!
What to Watch
The film The Story of Plastic recently one an Emmy for best writing for a feature-length documentary. You can now watch here for free for a limited time and learn about the reasons for worldwide concern over single-use plastics.
Plastic in Your Tea Bag
Plastics are entering our bodies at a rate of one credit card's worth per week through the air we breathe and the water we drink. Here is yet another avenue of absorption: the teabags we dunk.

Researchers at McGill University found that a single nylon or PET plastic tea bag releases more than 11 billion microplastic and 3 billion nanoplastic particles when steeped in boiling water. And, according to this Beyond Plastics fact sheet, many paper tea bags are also problematic.
You can request that tea companies transition to plastic-free teabags by writing to them. In the meantime, try loose leaf teas brewed in a glass, metal or ceramic strainer. Steepologie Teas on Madrone Lane carries strainers and bulk teas, and you can even bring your own container!

Finally, since tea bags often have staples, thread, plastic and/or a chemical sealant, do not compost the bag. The only safe part to compost are the tea leaves themselves.
Research Survey for Seafood Consumers
GRID-Arendal, a non-profit environmental communications center, has teamed up with several Indonesian groups to create a questionnaire that aims to find out if the perception and willingness of people buying seafood is affected by plastic pollution. They need a global baseline against which to compare results from Indonesia itself. Go here if you would like to take the survey.
Newsletter editor: Diane Landry, BI Zero Waste (Volunteer) Director
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BI Zero Waste is an all-volunteer program of Sustainable Bainbridge.
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