Help Bird and Insect Populations with your Yard or Garden

Florida Native Wildflower Monarda punctata (spotted Horsemint)

According to scientists who published in the journal Science this month the number of birds in the United States and Canada has declined by 3 billion over the past 50 years. That is nearly 30 percent of bird populations, and not just rare or endangered bird species but also common birds. Birds particularly impacted are those which feed on insects.  This downward trend runs parallel to a downward global trend in insect populations. A few of the suggested causes for the insect decline include habitat destruction caused by urbanisation, pesticides, climate change, and artificial lighting.

 There are two easy ways that you can help make a difference in healthy insect and bird populations. First, eliminate pesticides from your yard, and second grow a garden. Any size garden is helpful, even potted patio plants. Native plants for the yard are low maintenance and act as host plants for insects and pollinators. Another good place to start is with an Organic soil mix and seeds of native wildflowers. Look for native wildflowers and plants at your local farmer's markets.

Florida Wildflower Tropical Sage,  photo by Carl E Lewis (CC BY 2.0)

Aquarian Bath is doing our part to improve habitat for birds and insects! We were recently featured in the Daytona Beach News Journal for creating a certified wildlife habitat though the National Wildlife Federation and the Florida Wildlife Federation.

Clip of News Journal Article "Local business makes a difference to protect wildlife" Sept 2019

SolarNetOne Advanced Solar Battery Backup System for Home or Business

This is a video I made with my husband Scott last week. He is giving a tour of a new solar powered battery backup system that he designed, the latest technology from our other company SolarNetOne. The system allows the home owner to power the house, sell excess power back to the grid, and have days of emergency back up power during power outages, for example from hurricane. We are currently planning a similar install for outside the US this year.



Are you interested in a system like this for your home or business? Let us know, and we will contact you when more will be available later in the year.

Cory Trusty
president @ Aquarian Bath
VP @ SolarNetOne

Plastic Free July Business & Family Dilemma Box Videos

We are nearing the end of Plastic Free July for Aquarian Bath and our family. It has been quite an eye opening experience.  Even though we tried our best as a business and family to avoid single use plastic, there were most times not a lot of good options available for people looking for alternatives. Even though we have a flexible schedule, it was hard to try to keep up with the extra effort required to keep plastic use minimal in our family, like bread making, cracker making. A significant percentage of our plastic consumption came during a short time period when I had an injury that kept me of my feet. Another big issue was packaging from Organic produce. The more plastic that I tried to avoid, the more I noticed people carelessly discarding plastic at the beach. This was hugely frustrating. From Wikipedia, here are some facts on the effect of plastic pollution on marine animals:

Plastic pollution has the potential to poison animals, which can then adversely affect human food supplies. Plastic pollution has been described as being highly detrimental to large marine mammals, described in the book Introduction to Marine Biology as posing the "single greatest threat" to them. Some marine species, such as sea turtles, have been found to contain large proportions of plastics in their stomach. When this occurs, the animal typically starves, because the plastic blocks the animal's digestive tract. Marine mammals sometimes become entangled in plastic products such as nets, which can harm or kill them

As someone who runs a business with plastic free products like deodorant and shampoo bars, I can fairly say that there are a lot of people who are looking for plastic free packaging for their online purchases. So if you have an online business, don't be afraid to advertise that you offer plastic free options. Also sometimes less is more, so don't be afraid to try minimal or different packaging options. When I started shipping our flaxseed pillows in paper flat rate mailers a year or two ago, we had a fun time playing 'football' with test packages to see how well they held up, with surprisingly good results. 

Here is a rather novice video that we made of Aquarian Bath's Plastic Free July dilemma basket. These are plastic items that we ended up with despite trying to eliminate plastic. 



My daughter Moira of Organic Kitty Land, gives a run down of the plastics from her and her sister Tessa's plastic dilemma box. Moira shared at the end of the video that they ended up with plastic packaging from gummy bears that came with their restaurant meal. I was very proud of her for rejecting the plastic wrapped fortune cookies the next time we went out for a dinner. Tessa who said she didn't like Plastic Free July also surprised me by asking the waitress at the same dinner to not give us straws. Great results! I'm glad we signed up for the whole month instead of 1 or 2 weeks.



I do have another box of plastic that was individual/family/car/house and not so much related to kids, but I will just post of picture of that on twitter at the end of July.

Thanks for following our Plastic Free July posts.

Cory Trusty, President
Aquarian Bath

Plastic Free July

Plastic Free July started yesterday, and we signed up as a business (and individual/family). The goal of Plastic Free July is to refuse single use plastic. On a business level this can be quite a challenge when trying to source products and maintain inventory of supplies. One of our biggest frustrations as a business is receiving packages that are needlessly packaged in bubble wrap or sealed with plastic tape. We use paper tape from Uline for our outbound boxes. This kind of tape is usually offered with an expensive dispenser that has a place for water and a sponge.  It is really not necessary.  All you need is your fingers and a small dish with water.

 At this time our main vendors (oils, essential oils, clays, containers, herbs) do not use styrofoam or bubble wrap.  We pick up paper bulk bags of flax locally.  When we do receive bubble wrap or styrofoam we pass it on to a pack and ship company up the road to reuse. Sometimes our regular vendors run out of things we need.  In that case we do our best to work with new or back up vendors to restock. In those cases even if you have a good habit of asking for plastic free shipping materials, it is easy to forget to ask vendors not to include product samples that contain plastic. There are well meaning cooperative vendors who will agree to ship without plastic, but when shipping time comes they may forget. When we get boxes from the US postal service they are bundled in plastic. Our biggest plastic faux pax was the

'inheritance' of bottles from another company that was going out of business. After being offered and asking for the metal or glass bottles, we paid the shipping, and ended up with a huge box full of plastic PET bottles. This is why we still have massage oils in plastic bottles. When those run out, we will be purchasing glass or aluminum containers.

Many large companies refuse to ship with anything other than bubble wrap or styrofoam. This is insanely frustrating, and I think that it is very important that customers and individuals contact companies to ask them to cut back on plastic and styrofoam. For example, did you know that Ebay recommends bubble wrap packaging to every seller?  2013 Ebay revenues were at 7.4 billion dollars with 128 million active users. That is a lot of plastic waste if every seller follows their suggestion! This is a heavy ecological footprint, especially considering that many products do not need this level of protection during shipping. There are other more ecofriendly packaging options such as paper mailers, newspaper, kraft wadding. Please sign our

petition on change.org to Ebay to make suggestions other than bubble wrap for securely shipping products.  We have had this survey up for quite a while, but have hardly any signers, even though a lot of plastic free folks retweet the petition for us, star it on twitter, etc. 

Having had experience trying to run a business with minimal plastic for some time now, we don't expect to have a perfect Plastic Free July. However, we are happy to have an opportunity to tally our plastic use and average it over a year, and to learn from other businesses who try to use minimal single-use plastic. 

As an individual, my biggest frustration with avoiding plastic is that so much of the Organic and non-GMO foods are available only with extra plastic packaging. When we try to do everything just right with shopping to avoid plastic, there are always frustrations.  When the Organic bananas are taped in plastic and the Organic carrots are bagged in plastic, there is no single

ecofriendly purchasing choice. We have 5 raised beds for vegetables and herbs, plus 2 hens, but it is not enough to do more than supplement our basic needs.

Cory Trusty, president

Aquarian Bath