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1 week ago | 
bluedotliving.com | Elizabeth Weinstein
Dear Readers, “Mother’s Day is a sham that ruins a perfectly nice spring weekend,” according to a friend of mine, whom I’ll call Alice. This came in response to a message I’d sent to my book club’s group chat, asking the moms if they wanted any particular gifts or experiences for Mother’s Day. Their responses included: I do love flowers! But I want them to come in a vase, so I don’t have to do any work arranging them. I want to sleep until 10 am.
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2 weeks ago | 
bluedotliving.com | Elizabeth Weinstein
As spring puts on a show all around us, we can’t help but want to bring those flowers inside. If you find yourself longingly admiring public displays of daffodils and tulips, you deserve to treat yourself to some flowers. Or, spread the love and give flowers to someone else. Whether you're looking for sustainable flower delivery or something a little more unusual, you'll find the right gift here.
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1 month ago | 
bluedotliving.com | Elizabeth Weinstein
Dear Readers, Do you remember what your favorite shoes were when you were nine years old? I do. Mine were Airwalk sneakers, maroon with holographic sparkles that caught the light when I moved. I felt thrilled to be starting Mrs. Moser’s fourth grade class with such cool shoes, and I gazed at them often, wiggling my feet to make the colors dance. What were these glorious shoes made from? Pleather. Back then, in the ‘90s, we only really had two choices: plastic leather, aka pleather, and actual leather.
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1 month ago | 
bluedotliving.com | Elizabeth Weinstein |papillon Finley
It's April, and that means spring cleaning! You can visit the Bluedot BuyBetter Marketplace anytime to find sustainable goods, including our favorite laundry and cleaning products. Because most of us do dishes every day, small changes can really add up. We'd like to highlight three companies that make easy-to-use, plastic-free dishwashing products that really get the job done.
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2 months ago | 
bluedotliving.com | Elizabeth Weinstein |papillon Finley
Dear Readers, If you read the BuyBetter Marketplace newsletter, you'll know that the bottom of each email includes a picture of me and the following note: “Want to get in touch? I’d love to hear from you. Tell me about your favorite sustainable products, topics you’d like to see covered, or anything else that’s on your mind — email .” Guess what? I mean it.
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2 months ago | 
bluedotliving.com | Elizabeth Weinstein |papillon Finley
Late last year, you may have encountered a flurry of articles about the perils of black plastic kitchen tools. If not, I’ll summarize: It turns out that a lot of black plastic, including the black plastic that’s often used to make cooking tools, contains recycled electronic waste that can leach toxic chemicals into food during the cooking process. The initial study contained a significant mathematical error that led researchers (and reporters) to overstate the potential health risks.
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Feb 13, 2025 | 
bluedotliving.com | Elizabeth Weinstein |papillon Finley
Global weirding. It’s a term I’ve always liked more than “global warming,” and maybe even more than “climate change.” It’s a little cheekier, and sometimes, it just feels more accurate. The phrase never really seemed to take hold, but it seems tailor-made for the insane weather we’ve experienced recently. Ten inches of snow in Florida?! That’s global weirding.
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Feb 12, 2025 | 
bluedotliving.com | Elizabeth Weinstein |papillon Finley
Dear Readers, It’s been a painful few days. I grew up in Los Angeles. Like almost everyone there, I know several people who have lost their homes, and others who remain under evacuation orders (as of the 15th).
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Jan 2, 2025 | 
bluedotliving.com | Elizabeth Weinstein
Dear Readers,I’ve been on a bit of a food kick lately. Our most recent newsletters covered pantry must-haves and favorite beverages. Today, we’re talking cookware. It’s a fraught topic that may cause anxiety. Case in point: the time I remember thinking to myself, sometime soon after my mother died, that perhaps the scratched-up nonstick skillet we used to cook eggs in had been responsible for her death. To be clear, it definitely wasn’t the skillet’s fault that my mother got breast cancer.
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Jul 17, 2024 | 
bluedotliving.com | Elizabeth Weinstein
It was the summer of 2020, and I was lucky enough to be in Connecticut, living in the nearly empty lakefront home that my husband had grown up in and his sister had moved out of in March. I’d lost my consulting gig and had a fair amount of existential dread. But I also had a grand time. I baked sourdough, foraged for wild blueberries by kayak, candied violets that grew between the pavers, gardened endlessly, wrote over a thousand get-out-the-vote letters, and actually read The New Yorker each week.
