A little while ago, my daughter asked me to attend her school's weekly assembly because she was going to be performing in a short skit as one of the captains of the Green Team (yup, it runs in the family).   The students, about 60 of them all together in the upper grades at Wade Thomas, work together with a dedicated group of parents to promote being green on campus. That week the group was promoting the fact that they would be working with all the students to separate the trash into different cans every day at lunch: compost, landfill, recycle, and liquids.  The compost and liquid buckets (…

I gave up paper towels and most other store-bought household cleaning products years ago, well before the whole green movement began.  Once, when I was finishing up my degree back in Chicago in the 90s, I remember visiting friends in the suburbs and, while cleaning up after dinner, they handed me a paper towel to dry the dishes. We used no less than ten paper towels and threw them all in the garbage, even though there wasn't a spot of dirt or grime to be seen on one of them. It seemed ridiculous at the time and  I haven't bought a roll of paper towels since. Instead, I use old dish towels and…