Sunday, November 18, 2007

eco-friendly packing material

Adam bought me a Christmas gift from the Museum of Modern Art. I don't know what the gift is, but the packing material is pretty neat. It's these little cylinders which are starch-based (presumably corn starch). We used a corn starch weed rug from Lee Valley this summer in the garden, and it held up remarkably well. After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, I'm a little bit concerned with the mass growing of corn crops, (and more and more are being grown for ethanol now) but I think that these are still better than plastic. They can be reused, composted, or flushed. I think that's pretty versatile.

Here's the card that came in the box.
So I put some in a bowl of water, and waited.
Okay, so I couldn't just wait. I poked them a bit.
And after about a minute, they looked like this, and then they completely broke apart. So I swished them down the drain with some more water. Neat!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you read Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver? If not, I think you'd really like it. I read it recently and found it inspiring and informative.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, that's Miracle not Mineral! Nursing while typing, not a good combo...

Sherrie said...

Thanks for commenting! Yes, I did read it a couple of months ago. I really enjoyed it. I found that much of the information about the industry (I think it was at the beginning of the book) was the same as The Omnivore's Dilemma, but I loved how it was kind of her family's story. And I have a bunch of the recipes on my list to try, especially the roasted pumpkin soup in its own shell! Mmmmmm.