One of the less dignified things about my personal brand of environmentalism: routinely carrying half-rotted foodstuffs around in my lunch bag.
Case in point: I bring an orange to work. (Not local: I know.) After lunch, I eat the orange at my desk. I put the orange peel not in the garbage, but in the container in which I transported the yogurt I brought for breakfast. This is so I can compost it at home. So now I have an orange peel covered with traces of warm yogurt, and it sits next to me all afternoon and then travels home with me.
Not a pretty picture.
Same goes for banana peels, tea bags, etc. I can’t stand throwing this stuff away.
It probably makes for a somewhat less than fabulous "personal style," but I stand by my hoarding of organic matter. We all do generate a lot of waste, and it shouldn’t be entirely convenient to deal with it. We have to confront on some level the reality of our way of life. Of course, if I were truly facing facts I wouldn’t be eating that orange in the first place; I’d eat only the apples we bought last fall at the farmers’ market. And I’d take the cores home to compost.
Anyone else have a nasty little habit that’s good for the planet?
