Do you have a cough right now or know someone who does? Then I want to talk to you. In December, I caught a cold and towards the end of it was hacking pretty badly. Now, I realize that you don’t want to suppress a productive cough. But this cough was bad enough to keep me up at night, robbing me of much needed rest. So I polished off two plastic bottles of cough/cold medicine: the remainder of a bottle of Nyquil that I bought years ago (yeah, it still worked) as well as the last couple of doses of yummy Prometh cough syrup with Codeine. And by yummy, I mean I held my hose and chugged it down, trying to bypass my taste buds as much as possible.

Many of you have seen Chris Jordan’s recent heartbreaking photos of dead albatross chicks on Midway Atoll with bellies full of plastic. And perhaps you have seen, or at least heard how sea turtles eat plastic, mistaking it for the jelly fish upon which they usually dine. Most recently, beached whales have been found with plastic in their bellies. People see these images or read these stories, maybe feel sad for a minute, and then go on about their lives. Albatrosses and sea turtles are creatures most of us don’t encounter on a daily basis. Their fate is sad, but it doesn’t directly affect us. Well, I want to show some photos and relate a story from the Terry-Stoler household that brings the issue of harm to animals a little closer to home. My cat eats plastic.

What if you were told you were only allowed to generate five pounds of plastic trash this year? And what if that five pounds had to include both your recyclable AND non-recyclable plastic? Could you do it? How would you live? According to reports from the Environmental Protection Agency (PDF) and the California Integrated Waste Management Board (PDF), the average American generates between 88 and 128 pounds of plastic trash (before recycling) per year.

I frequently get asked about what I do for plastic-free makeup, and honestly I haven’t had the best answer. I continue to use the products that I already had and generally only replace them with plastic-free alternatives once they are used up.

Actually, no. While recycling is certainly important -- we do it in our home -- it's not enough, and here are a few reasons why:

Once upon a time there was a little girl whose only wish was for a Barbie Country Camper. This was 1971. For simplicity's sake, let's call the little girl Beth. Beth had seen the Barbie Country Camper in Saturday morning TV commercials, and she wanted her Barbies to have the fold-out picnic table, pop-out tent, sleeping bags, and camper kitchen. The Barbie Country Camper was the first and most important item in her long list of wants that she secretly wrote and mailed to Santa Claus. And for two weeks before Christmas, she dreamed about the Barbie Country Camper when she went to bed at night.Christmas Eve, she didn't even go to sleep at all. Butterflies danced in her stomach and Country Camper thoughts raced through her head. When Christmas morning finally arrived, she raced downstairs to find under the tree the Barbie Country Camper she'd been waiting for! She raced over to the Barbie Country Camper, grabbed it to her chest, and hugged it. And then she looked at the gift tag."To Fran, Love Santa"WTF? Okay, she didn't say WTF because there weren't text messages in 1971, and she wouldn't have known what F stood for anyway.  But still, WTF?

Pretty much everyone bemoans how consumerism's killed Christmas and other winter holidays -- and how much they want no part of that crappy-plastic-gizmo-giving, money-wasting dealio. Yet cheapo useless gifts seem to fly off the shelves every year. What gives?

Fake plastic wishbones? Around Thanksgiving time last year, I read a post by blogger Rejin from Urban Botany blasting People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for promoting plastic Lucky Break Wishbones. She wrote: Hasn't PETA ever heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? They claim these wishbones and their packages are recyclable, but let's face it: 99.99% of them are going to end up in a landfill, or in the ocean, where they will probably be swallowed by sea turtles [And I would add baby albatross chicks] who will choke and die.... Animals, PETA, animals! Do you hear me? Apparently PETA did not because the organization promoted the wishbones again this year. Products like these are what blogger Linda Anderson from Citizen Green would call "stupid plastic crap."

Each week, we're sharing our favorite links from our friends at Planet Green and TreeHugger. Enjoy! Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot? Paris Hilton builds a $325 mansion...for her dogs. Here's a cheat sheet—complete with pictures!—of the world's healthiest, sustainably harvested seafood.

I hear people bemoaning the high cost of "going green." And while organic food does cost more than its chemical-laden counterpart, I'm here to tell you that it's easier to spend more for healthy food when you save money in other ways. We can skip many of the green cleaners, deodorizers, and personal care products, most of which are fairly expensive. Why? Because baking soda is our friend. What's so great about baking soda?

What's more ironic than local, organic, seasonal food encased in plastic? That's what I wondered back in 2007 when I first started my quest to eliminate unnecessary plastic from my life. A trip to my local farmers market revealed more than just fruits and vegetables. Have a look at a few photos I shot:

E-books, man. They're infiltrating schools. Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Conn., got rid of the 20,000 books in its school library, trading up to flatscreens, Kindles and computers only. And now that Google has paired with On Demand Books (the company that invented a book vending machine), schools could potentially serve up printed e-books in the public domain like cotton candy.