Paper, plastic, or canvas? Glass or cardboard or plastic milk jugs?

Tonight we went to Science Pub (taking D. with us, for once) to learn about the life-cycle assessments of the environmental impacts of lots of consumer products. The speaker was David Tyler of the UO chemistry department. It's amazing to think that as much water goes into growing the cotton to make a pair of jeans as goes into washing that pair of jeans for the rest of its usable life. Also, if you shatter a compact fluorescent bulb, keep your kids away from the area for at least a couple of weeks, because of the mercury levels. And so much energy goes into firing a ceramic mug that it's actually better to use disposable plastic ones, unless you have just one ceramic mug that you're going to use for a very long time.

Today was quite a flurry of activity for me, though D. was commenting on how relaxing his day was, lots of League of Legends and popcorn and such. He's on a four-day weekend. Also, bummer about Terry Pratchett. I'm glad there's one more Tiffany Aching book in the pipeline.