She’s all earth-mothered out with long, flowing hair and patchwork skirts. This is what I’m up against. People see her and roll their eyes before she can speak. “Here comes Crunchy,” they mutter, “quick, hide your hummus.”

First day I catch her eyeing my trashcan, preparing her Lavender lotioned fingers for a quick rifling. “What are you doing?” She doesn’t even have the decency to lie. “Looking for recyclables. I figured you don’t… you know… but… it’s really important to me. I just…” she sighs here and beams with smugness, “I just really really love our planet, you know?”

I do know. I love it to. I have a recycling bin. I wear Certified Fair Trade organic shirts.  So what if I wear them with jeans every day and don’t go out in my front yard and hug the Maple every night before bed? I’m fed up with people assuming that because I don’t have dreadlocks or wear I ♥ our Planet shirts, I’m obviously on my way to buying a Hummer and bulldozing the Rainforest for my own personal playground.

This week I’m printing out the following flyer and leaving it as a surprise for her in my trashcan. Hey, Crunchy, if you don’t have room in your bin for it, you know where else you can shove it.

What’s so cool about green flies?

“The name green bottle fly (or greenbottle fly) is applied to numerous species of blowfly… The maggots of this fly are known to… consume dead tissue while leaving live tissue intact, and have been sold for use in maggot therapy.” (Read More Here.)

Maggots clean wounds 18 times faster than normal treatments, can conquer MRSA and would save the NHS millions. Peta Bee reports (See the full article at Times Online.)

(My original photo of real maggots was deemed too gross for the public. O RLY?  A quick Google search of “cute maggots” fixed that. Wah-lah. Nothing cuter than jelly maggots! Amiright?)

For those of you who don’t want to read the full articles,  Green Bottle fly larvae have been used medicinally worldwide. Packed into wounds to seek out dead flesh and tissue and eat it, the larvae leave only pink, healthy flesh behind.

Wow, right?  Way to go, Nature.

If you don’t see the metaphorical link between the way Nature recycles and the name of our site, let me clarify. The secret lies in the photo of the jelly maggots. For the rest of you, if you have a cool recycling tip you want to share, send in your idea with a photo of you wearing one of our shirts and we’ll be sure to include it in our next blog.

Also, you’ll notice that we have a forum on our website because we want to know what your likes and dislikes are. (Preferably pertaining to the site. We already know that you like dancing to Michael Jackson when you think no one else is home.) Tell us what works and what doesn’t. Tell us which designs you love and which ones reek of awfulness. Don’t be a pansy, you won’t hurt our feelings. Help us help you. Our aim is to keep you around like flies on shi beer.

Are you in a band and need merch shirts? A local designer that wants your work on our site? Do you have questions, comments, suggestions, love letters, fan-mail, hate-mail?  Send it to: thefly@greenflyshop.com.

And just because we care: Bacon Waffles!!

The Fly