At the Interdependence Project, we recently concluded our one month practice of reduced consumption!

[pause for applause and cheering]

It was a great month of activities, including pledging to reduce our use of disposable items, making and giving away reusable bags, street theater, petitioning, and ending with an amazing plastic bag protest featuring Reverend Billy, No Impact Man, and the plastic bag monster.

For those of you who may have missed out, or if you want to push yourself further than just doing a one month challenge (whether you live in NYC or not), the Brooklyn Green Team and GreenEdge Collaborative NYC have put together at 3 month No Take Out Challenge. Why? Because:

• The US population tosses out enough paper and plastic cups, forks and spoons every year to circle the equator 300 times. Read that again.

• Paper comes from trees. Plastic comes from oil. To obtain either one, worldwide forests are being contaminated and destroyed.

• Almost 1/3 of the waste generated in the US is from packaging! Plastictakes 1,000 years to decompose (and really it just keeps gettingsmaller and smaller).

Just to drive the point home (in a fun way), check out this amusing spoof: