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

Ode to Monsanto by Maimouna Youssef

Underwater Blue Springs Manatee Video

My husband put together this video of the manatees at Blue Springs using the video he shot with his underwater camera and the video that I took with my HP photo smart.  Audio by Enigma.  Enjoy.

Rosemary's Remedies: Onion Honey Cough Syrup Demonstration

I just watched a nice video from Rosemary Gladstar on how to make onion syrup.  I can't wait to try it.  It is very simple.  Just two ingredients onion and honey, though you can use garlic also.  It reminds me of the garlic honey that I make for cold and flu season.  You can watch Rosemary demonstrate and  discuss her method at Rosemary's Remedies  

Fair Share Community Gardening in Chattanooga

If you were wondering what is new with Fair Share, check out this video with Joel Tippens in one of his new Fair Share community gardens in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It is really amazing what he has done with this parking lot. The garden is right on top of a parking lot. The focus of Fair Share is bringing food security to inner city food deserts.

Preparing the Florida Garden for a Freeze

This is the second youtube garden video that I've made. Just a quick little video showing what I do to prepare my garden for a freeze. I didn't get to cover everything, because the cold got me coughing out of control. I'm still getting over a cold I guess. My voice was kind of low in this, I'll try to do better next time. Maybe I can work myself up to some how to videos that are more exciting. Until then hope you like this.



This video was from yesterday. I need to cover the plants again tonight. I made a whole bunch of items today that I'm pretty excited about. So stay tuned for those: Hazelnut Coffee Lip Balms, limited edition Rose Perfumes, Patchouli Hemp Shampoo Bars, and a new batch of deodorant.

Also if you haven't checked out the new look of my shampoo bars, I hope you like them. The preorders from the Neem Batch have been selling like crazy.

New Garden Video

In order to show off my pumpkin patch I made this little youtube video. I'm really not a video expert. It was the first time I made a public youtube video, so my notes were a little off. I was getting used to the editor. I hope you like it though. You will be able to get an idea about how I am growing the herbs and pumpkins that I use in my products including Holy Basil and Calendula. I wasn't able to point out every herb, maybe next time.