Information Overload

After London, I headed down to Port Orchard, Washington to visit my Dad and his wife, Beth. They have just begun a new farmers market venture, selling lavender and eggs at two farmer’s markets from what they grow on their farm, Blue Sky Farm.

It was the eggs that got me thinking…

Apparently when you sell eggs in Washington legitimately, you can’t reuse the egg cartons. Every dozen eggs needs a fresh new carton. And those cartons, which are perfectly reusable (eggs come with their own built-in packaging, after all) cost 25 cents each! What a waste of resources and money.

So, here is my idea for the farmer’s market egg people of the world. Bring your own carton, just like bringing your own bag. The camping section of your local box store sells those brightly colored plastic egg cartons that people use for camping. They’re durable and you can clean them, and they’re pretty funky. You can convince your market egg dealer to let you load up your eggs that way, eliminating all that waste and, if you’re anything like Rod and I, ending the tower of used egg cartons that we have piled up in our pantry.

Back from two weeks of traveling.

First, to London for the St. Bride Print Library conference. Theme: Seeking Inspiration. My talk was about how design issues are intertwined with issues surrounding the logging and paper industry.

Tyler Moorehead spoke as one of the keynotes, and introduced a great idea to the audience of designers. The proposal, called A2B, is to change the size of standard office paper from A4 to B4, thus reducing office waste by 30%. It lead to a 20 minute question session, which, hey, meant the designers were thinking about it. Here’s the link to her website, Satellite, the Green Agency: http://www.satellitemc.com/

The rest of our trip was all art and friends and walking. I highly recommend London in May.