Letters to the Editor
We welcome your opinions and letters – with name and address. We will edit when necessary. Include your name, address and phone number for verification. Mail them to Bay Weekly, P.O. Box 358, Deale, MD 20751 •
E-mail them to [email protected]. or submit your letters on line, click here
Aerosol-Free Shaving
Dear Bay Weekly:
In reference to EarthTalk of Sept. 4: “Global Warming in a Can”: To this end, where can I buy an old-fashioned shaving soap mug to replace the one I broke years ago? I still see the soap cakes for sale, but never any mugs.
P.S. And shaving brushes, too?
–Michael Kane, Lusby
Editor’s note: You’re right. Local stores where we’ve found shaving soap and brushes (among them The Java Stop in Deale: 410-867-1711) say their suppliers don’t stock shaving mugs. For a recycled mug, browse antique shops. Or order a new mug in traditional style from Baltimore’s Quintessential Gentleman.
Burton’s Right: Unleash the Pit Bulls
Dear Bay Weekly:
My wife and I and our three boys moved to a home on the Little Magothy River in 1978. We have, as Bill Burton reported in his article “The Law of the Bay: Sew up the Loopholes and Enforce It”: [No. 33, Aug. 14] witnessed the demise of the Bay right before our eyes. It is now, for all intents and purposes, dead.
But no one wants to bury the Bay. They continue to talk about reviving it by 2010. What planet are these people living on? They just have to look at the statistics published by Sen. Ben Cardin to understand just how our farmers are polluting the Bay without being held accountable by anyone.
Unleash the pit bulls on them now. Or, better yet, on their lobbyists.
–Cliff Dean, Annapolis
Less is Better: Shop Naked
Dear Bay Weekly:
LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics would like to say a big thank you to everyone in Annapolis who got behind our cheeky, anti-packaging campaign to urge customers to buy “naked” goods.
Our brave staff, who took to the aisles wearing nothing but aprons reading Ask Me Why I’m Naked, reported overwhelming support from customers and passers-by, who were being urged to do their bit for the environment by purchasing products that are free of packaging.
Unnecessary packaging can be found in almost every retailer: loose fruit individually shrink-wrapped in supermarkets, the prolific use of plastic bags and the mountains of plastic bottles used for cosmetic products are all contributing to the growing environmental crisis. The statistics make for sobering reading: Packaging contributes to two percent of overall greenhouse gases and plastic uses eight percent of the world’s oil resources. With the U.S. consuming 79.6 million tons of packaging each year, over half of which still ends up in landfills, the time to tackle our packaging addiction is now.
The only way this will change is if you, the consumer, tell retailers and manufacturers that you are fed up with over-packaging. Small steps can lead to big change and help save our planet.
–Jennifer Graybeal
for LUSH Cosmetics, New York City
