By Rita Savage
Recycled Larabar wrappers (photo by Rita Savage)
On July 2nd 2009, day 39 of Roz’s row across the Pacific, she wrote a blog about her food, and made particular mention of Larabars. She is a big fan of these healthy rawfood snack bars – as well as tasting great, the minimal processing involved in their manufacture means they have a low carbon footprint. She knew she would munch her way through about 300 bars during her 100 or so days at sea, and was keeping all the Larabar wrappers with a view to making something out of them – but wasn’t sure what, so she asked for suggestions. Richard Cort in Austin, Texas, came up with this excellent idea:
“Each one could be easily laminated, and turned into an excellent bookmark. Then enclose one with special copies of the Atlantic book, as a souvenir from the Pacific trip. I would think that it would be a treat for readers to have a (Larabar) bookmark that had actually been on one of the journeys. I know that I’d want one.”
Work on the bookmarks could’t start until a) Roz had finished her row and brought the wrappers to land, and then b) the bookmarks had been signed and shipped from Hawaii to England, so it was not possible to have the bookmarks ready in time to go out with the copies of Rowing The Atlantic which people had ordered from Amazon. But work is now underway in Leeds, West Yorkshire, where Roz’s mother, Rita, is busy as a bee assembling and laminating them, and will be sent out shortly.
Each bookmark has a personally signed card on one side, and a Larabar wrapper on the reverse. It has not been easy to remove all the wrinkles from the wrappers, so Rita has been carefully ironing each wrapper to get it as flat as possible. Some of the wrappers have been a bit sticky – especially the Jocolat ones – but don’t worry, once they’re laminated you won’t have the bookmark getting stuck to the pages of your copy of Rowing The Atlantic!
May these bookmarks be a reminder, as the years go by, of what Roz was doing to draw attention to the plight of our planet and its oceans – and how recycling our rubbish is a great way to reduce the amount of stuff that ends up in landfill.
