Setting the Tone

I originally made fun of Oprah's "Favorite Green Things" show, which I recently saw in reruns over the holidays. It's a riff on the ever-popular, all-consumer "Favorite Things" holiday show, which turns people into crazed shoppers seeking William Sonoma panini presses and Ugg boots. Kind of like our moms in the 80s hunting Cabbage Patch dolls (I got a homemade version named Jamie, who was just as cute and since my mom worked at a hospital I got a birth certificate with actual baby footprints on it! I wonder where that kid is today).

Anyway, the show was full of all those useful tips like: Donate clothes, don't throw them away. Use CFL lightbulbs. Don't spray your house with bleach and toxic chemicals. One tip, though, hit home.

Elizabeth Rogers, who wrote The Green Book, a collection of "little things that make a big difference" said that the average person uses 6 paper napkins a day. She suggests that if we all gave up just one napkin a day, we could save a BILLION pounds of paper waste from going to the landfills (remember: you can't recycle soiled paper, including pizza boxes with cheese stuck in it).

While I don't think I use 6 napkins a day, I definitely felt this was an area of unnecessary waste I could easily eliminate, because even though we have recycled, bleach-free Seventh Generation paper products - it's still waste paper. Anyway, I have a drawer full of cloth napkins I've picked up along the way for various Thanksgiving meals or "fancy" occasions that need to be used.

So, the Angelos are going 5-star. We use cloth napkins every night with dinner instead of paper. It adds a certain element of class to the veggie burgers. And unless Marc has another incident with the wine glass or I over-dress the salad, we can get 2 or 3 uses out of each Ralph Lauren Home beauties before I have to wash 'em.