2019 for me is all about reducing plastic coming into my home/life/whatever. It's a bit rough.
Each evening, when I remember which is about 75% of the time, I write down my plastic use/acquisition whatever. I don't count plastic I salvage specifically to pass on to another person. That sounds odd, but so am I. Yesterday I picked up a plastic pallet for a friend who is coming to till up my garden. She uses them as the base for her duck house. easier to scrap the poo off and easier on the duck feet than a wooden pallet or wire base. I get these used sitting in alleys or where ever. I figure at least they are getting used longer before they end up in that plastic island in the Pacific ocean. They are also out of the sunlight which should mean they degrade more slowly. She is tracking the effect on the ducks.
ANYWAY...since China decided they don't want our dirty plastic buggering up their country, we've been able to "recycle" fewer types at my local recycling place. I realized before that some of what we were putting there wasn't really recycled but instead just put in landfills later or polluting somewhere else. When it quit being accepted, that point got driven home, as discussed in a previous post.
This article at CNN reminded me to redouble my reduction efforts:
CHINA'S RECYCLING BAN HAS SENT AMERICA'S PLASTIC TO MALAYSIA. NOW THEY DON'T WANT IT - SO WHAT NEXT
I'm not linking that because the link will die in days anyway.
So, 2019 is as good a time as any to cut back on plastic. The first step in figuring out how to get to a new place, on the planet or in life, is to know where you area when you start. I did this with money budgeting and dieting. If you don't face facts about the current situation, you don't understand why things aren't working. This is why I started paying attention to my current plastic usage in January 2019. It was higher than I thought...same with money and food intake when I started cutting those back. Better to be honest with oneself than to keep pretending you didn't eat an entire box of nutty buddies (damn you Little Debbie!) or buy an old hotel safe for a silverware drawer (damn you Craigslist!).
About a week in to tracking plastic use, I started where I seemed to have the most coming in...groceries. Damn you convenience! I now do better at remembering to bring my own bag or ask for paper or just carry arm loads of crap to the car. I took empty jars and coffee cans with reasonably tight lids to the food co-op and wrote the tare weights on them empty. Same with the produce bags I've been given over the years.
For solstice a favorite aunt sent me a new beeswax food wrap! Thanks Marcie! (other aunts are favorites too). Getting one of these per year would be ideal. They last a long time but eventually get mungy and the wax flakes and things. She also wisely chose the one made on organic cotton and packaged in paper. Some are hemp fabric and I am allergic so that I would have passed on to another person. I looked up how to make my own wax wraps online and may try it. We'll see. I am nothing if not lazy. So, using that for left overs or apples or whatever instead of cling wrap is another good way to cut back on the plastic, especially the thin plastic.
Cutting back on using plastic bags for my bulk foods purchases wasn't too hard, though when I forget a container or end up at a store where they don't let me use my own container or won't deduct the tare weight from the total weight...I have to start debating. I have found that some places will let me re-use a paper bag for bulk foods (like nuts 'n such) but not a jar...I don't get it but I did start saving the paper bags that are in good shape and found some lunch sacks (in plastic dammit!) at a thrift store for super cheap and try to remember to throw a couple of those in the grocery basket Sherry (Hi Sherry!) got me years ago for Xmas and it's still good and I still use it almost every day. It's made of plastic but more on durable plastic vs single use below.
Packaging on foods is a tough one. I end up buying more bulk, more fresh fruit and veg, and precious little meat. Sardines in tins and tuna in tins has less plastic than wrapped meats. Getting my own meat, e.g. fishing or going to a friend's house when she butchers (Hi Cindy!) ducks and chickens works pretty well. Cindy pressure cans the meat usually so only the lid liner on the re-used jars is new plastic. I think meat independence and canning, drying, and pickling meat will help me with this. Also...beans. But I'm taking yoga and lifting weights so I don't want to eat TOOO many beans and then be that lady in yoga who farts through the whole class. When I lift at the gym, I'm usually alone, then I sneak out a toot and instantly someone else shows up and I don't even have a dog to blame it on. So, easing beans into the diet.
The bit that should not have surprised me is how much healthier it is to eat when one avoids plastic. I end up buying "super foods" (formerly known as "food") like steel cut oats, apples, potatoes, carrots, lentils, rice, flour to make my own breads, and etc. I'll do a "super foods" rant in a different blog.
When I'm traveling, and I end up REALLY wanting a coffee, having forgotten my plastic-free (or low plastic ) system of my travel french press (yay Planetary Design from a thrift store!) and an insulated stainless steel bottle of super hot water (yay thrift stores!), then I do a drive through. I try to get the least plastic but alas and alack, those damn coffee lids. I do get a lid when I forget my own mug because showing up to whatever meeting with a giant brown coffee stain from chin to knees is not super professional. Showing up without the proper level of caffeine in my blood stream results in other non-professional behavior. I'm keeping an eye out for more of those french presses at thrift so I can keep one and a jar of coffee in the car. Hot water can be had at most gas stations and grocery stores. I HAD 2 extras but passed them on to friends who were looking for ways to avoid the constant plastic waste from the keurig type coffee makers most offices at work went to. (I did break down and use the keurig twice last week...to avoid flaming out at a colleague who was getting on my last nerve).
I have also found that some restaurants with drive-thrus use less plastic than others and have targeted those. The one where they hand-patty their burgers and sell them in paper bags with paper wrappers closed...due to employee cash theft or something. (Damn you underpaid fast food workers!) A local cafe started a drive up window if you call ahead and I have used it a few times because they cook from scratch and do their best to use up food which will result in less food and plastic waste. BUT they now put the meal in a styrofoam clamshell, in a thin plastic grocery bag. If their BLTs weren't so damn good (at the lunch shift..the youngsters working in the evening use cold half cooked bacon fat blobs and yet somehow get the sandwich to sweat in clamshell...and once I had to tell them what the B, the L and the T stood for...and I ended up with a cold sweaty cheese burger in a plastic box. That pretty well cured me of ordering there in the evening. (Thanks slightly dim cafe worker kid!) I could order an extra lunch and bring that sandwich wrap thing if I planned ahead and walked into the restaurant).
The quest for the plastic free restaurant and to-go meal resulted in me using that as an excuse to eat at too many drive thrus and restaurants with resulted in 5lbs gained and quite a chunk of change lost. I warned my new co-worker that May was all about NOT having delicious restaurant lunches when we are out of town. I'm trying to keep and apple and container of nuts (bulk purchased) in my bag or car at all times to avoid this. So far, remembering it about 50% of the time.
For non-food type plastic avoidance, things get more complicated still. I have stopped buying anything but wood or metal stakes for my plants and tree starts. More expensive than fiberglass and plastics, but also more re-usable.
Sometimes I cop to a durable plastic item that I will use and re-use. And if I can get it used, all the better. I still grab 5-gallon plastic buckets at the recycling center free bucket bin. These are the corner stone of my composting toilet system. They seem to last years. A bucket starts as a storage unit for bee equipment or food, or seeds or whatever. Or as a toilet buck (old crusty weak buckets that have been in the sun and the plastic is brittle are not a good option for toilets ...I don't want to risk a break down mid---well, you know). Once a toilet bucket, it stays a toilet bucket until it might get weak and then it is an outside garbage bucket for when I have to pick up trucker bombs by the highway (with gloves) and haul those to a dumpster. I'm afraid I'm not willing yet to pour out the trucker pee from the old plastic they peed in and threw on my property. It goes in a well used bucket, into the back of the truck, and to the dumpster. I'm not unwilling to have pee on my land, but god knows what the high levels of no-doze or painkillers would do to my flora and fauna.
Storage buckets move next to water hauling buckets, then to tool and trash hauling buckets before retirement to the recycling center or dumpster depending on the type of plastic and whether I can recycle it right now.
When I buy buckets to use on the property, I go for metal which is about double the cost of a plastic bucket and lasts, apparently, forever. These don't have air-tight lids so aren't great for some storage needs.
Buying clothes...I buy mostly at thrift but undies need to be new. I found some (at a 2nd run retail where old retail goes to die) new and on a plastic hangar rather than in a plastic bag. I don't know which is better or worse. I looked in to buying online, but the packaging for shipping is usually a few layers of plastic bags, and the undies cost more. So...dear readers who know me....cotton undies size 6 hipster style would be excellent Xmas and Bday presents.
I try to avoid nylon, polyester...actually this will be shorter: I try to buy cotton and wool and leather/suede clothes rather than synthetics. And almost all from thrift. Sox and undies and some shoes/boots I buy new. I look for durable and the highest natural fiber content I can get, then look at style and color. I do have several fishing shirts with pit-zipper vents that are mostly synthetic. I have yet to wear one of these out. One was a gift and is at least 10 years old. These qualify as a "durable" plastic to me. I find that less offensive than one-off things like store bags. I go for high quality so I can stitch up rips and tears an patch them and get maximum life out of them. The synthetics still give off micro-trash in the washer and dryer that ends up in the streams and in the wind and harms the environment so I'm still trying to limit the number of these I own, minimize the washing/drying especially at the laundromat where the wear and tear sends more of the fabric downstream/wind. Hand washing and hang drying tears them up less and they last longer. People must be sick of seeing me in the same 10 shirts, but do I care? I do not.
Buying thrift store stuff...Goodwill locally now bags things like candles, matches, office supplies and other smaller goods in PLASTIC! Dammit! I use lots of candles as light spectrum correctives at my place because I use rechargable LED lights which are a bit blue and annoying. Also, a candle is a nice minimal light and makes one feel warm. But I don't want a big plastic bag on my cheap candles. I'm re-melting candle nubbins and trying to make more candles with candle wicks I find at thrift. The wicks have less plastic on them than the bagged candles. So far, not a crashing success and I'm hoping to be able to make my own wicks some day. I have bees so perhaps I will also have beeswax, but not enough for the next few years at least.
I may have to revert to new paper goods over thrift store office supplies or find alternative, grungier, thrift stores for paper because the plastic bags really annoy me.
When I do get plastic bags, I re-use them. I have a high quality smallish plastic store bag that I call "the bag of bags" and rinse, dried plastic bags, and other bags, get stuffed in there. Then when I'm casting about the wee shed for a bag to put something in (perhaps an apple and some nuts) I know where to find a reasonable clean one. If I'm giving food away I find people like to see it in a zip-type bag. I get those when people give me stuff, wash them out, and re-use. I tried giving stuff in an obviously re-used paper sack and some folks got grossed out. I have many tin, steel and glass containers but stopped handing food out in those because only a small subset came back to me and it was pissing me off.
I have also been tracking plastic-coated paper. Partly because I can't compost this or make it into paper fire bricks. Coffee hut coffee cups ...usually plasticized. Receipts from stores (which I take to track my budget) ...usually plasticized. Junk mail, catalogs, etc etc etc...often plasticized.
I'm also finding plasticized stickers on my local organic apples! GEEZ!!! Really food co-op? If I can get a couple of root cellars going I hope to buy and grow basic vegetables and fruit to avoid more of those stupid stickers.
Then there is the plastic people give you. I'm trying to do a number of plastic-free days per month, just like the "no spend" days that help my budget. I will be going along well, not buying anything, not using the keurig coffee at work, drinking tap water rather than bottled, etc. THEN someone will give me a gift or office supplies arrive at work. In plastic or made of plastic. Dammit! It is everywhere. I'm lucky to get 5 or 6 days a month without plastic coming into my possession. If I stay home, see no one, buy nothing, I can do it. That is my preferred mode of living, but with a job and volunteering and people knowing where I live, it doesn't happen often.
Specific to me things...I went "foundationless" on my bees, though I'm using bits of plastic foundation I already had as comb guides in the hives. That wasn't "new" to me plastic and if it works, it will cut back on the apiary plastic consumption. I got 2 packages of bees (more in another post) and those came not in the old wood and screen type packages but in STUPID plastic packages! DAMMIT!!! I don't know if they will take these at recycling and I'm looking for ways to re-use them. Perhaps mouse traps? Queen excluders? Entrance reducers? Hive ventilation?
Any and all ideas on how to avoid, limit, reuse, recycle and otherwise reduce plastic in my life are welcome.
