Today I had the opportunity to hand out reusable straws in the Lyndhurst Home Days parade.
It’s funny because I didn’t know where the parade was or what it was for until I arrived this morning.
My sister was walking in the parade with her church and when I was worried about being able to get rid of my reusable produce bags after being denied at different grocery stores, she mentioned this parade as an option.
Then the produce bags flew off the tables and encouraged me to sign up for my last do-gooder grant of 2019 quickly so I could hand them out at this parade.
I wanted to do reusable straws. Since I didn’t know the name of the parade, it was marked on my calendar as “Straw Parade”.
Compared to my turn around time with my last do-gooder project, this had a fast production. I knew what I wanted to buy – I found the straws and brushes I wanted quickly, calculated the number of sets of straws and brushes I needed faster than one of the nerds on the Big Bang Theory, and I was able to format a new smaller flier super fast.
I didn’t use my seed money for the fliers and opted to print them at home since they were all black & white and I was able to fit 4 to a page. I really wanted to maximize the amount of straws I could hand out, in order to promote zero waste and change everyone for the betterment of the planet. And the sea turtles.
School had started and to be honest, with the start of the school year…..my stress level has increased….causing an uptick in the amount of online shopping I’ve been doing.
There seems to be a package arriving daily at my house and I don’t always remember what it is, until I open the package.
So when this big, heavy box was sitting on my kitchen table….and I had no idea what was in it….I had a brief wondering that maybe I really should seek some medication or professional help for my memory….
I bought 20 boxes of these reusable straws from Amazon and I bought extra brushes too since through discussions, we thought people needed a way to clean them and not get disgruntled with their free reusable straws and complain about them on social media.
Now there’s no excuse angry people on social media!
Some of the items came wrapped in plastic…..sigh……
But they were a most beautiful rainbow bouquet of straws! I kind of wanted to put them in a vase and admire them on my dining room table for awhile.
Putting the silicone tips on the straws and wrapping them and tying these tiny little bows with my hemp string ball that’s leftover for my teens/20’s was no small feat. I started wrapping them last weekend and had to force myself to do a box or two each night this week (hence the lacking blog posts) and thankfully my husband started helping too, which sped up the process.
My thumbs still hurt though.
I went with one tall, one short, one straight, one bent straw per pack and a straw brush, so each person got 2 straws. They looked like this:
I was anxious before the parade because I knew people would probably decline them and as we turned the corner at the start of the parade, my comforting thought was, “well….when I have extras – I can always take them to work because I know there would be lots of people who would like them there.”
And I think we were just both excited to get out and do some good and promote something that we both believe in.
The first couple of people on my side seemed interested and there were a few “what a great idea! this is amazing!” comments which made my heart happy.
I came up to some dudes and I offered them to the first guy I came to, “Would you like some reusable straws?” and he declined – but all the next 4 people took them. While I was handing them out to those people, the first guy walked over to me and was like, “Actually I would really like those!”
And I knew we had a hit on our hands.
Especially when I looked at my sister across the street getting mobbed by a group of teenage girls who wanted to choose the colors of their straws. I barely eeked out a picture as the girls were walking away from her.
We had people asking for an extra set for their children – people were saying things like, “They come with a straw so we can clean them??? Awesome!” “I can throw these in my purse!” “I’m saving a sea turtle!” We even had people getting out of the floats around us to ask for some.
Soon we were at least 100 meters behind our designated float area and we barely made it through one third (maybe even a quarter) of the people watching the parade.
So at the end of the parade, where everyone was sitting because it was close to the festival, I was just this weird lady with a toddler on her back who was picking up candy in the middle of the street for her children.
I think both my sister and I were really encouraged by doing good and the reception the straws received. I told her next year, she should spearhead this as a project for her church and add in their church flier with the zero waste flier. And since it’s a Lutheran church, more people have the opportunity through Thrivent to get these small grants so they could do a bunch of mini-zero waste projects for the parade.
Even 8 months into this journey, I still feel awkward sometimes when I am in public doing zero-waste things, but this is just more reinforcement to be an example for everyone and to keep promoting the small things that people can do to make a positive impact for the planet.
The Beck Trek 