Monday, September 10, 2007

First official day

We chose today to be our first official day without plastic. For 30 days, we will avoid buying plastic in any form. The "rules" are as follows:

  • Avoid purchasing plastic as much as possible
  • We can use plastic that we already have, such as produce bags
  • Any plastic we bring home will be added to a pile, which we will document at the end of the project
  • This project should not impact our normal lives much
Pretty simple, right?

The first impression so far is that we really need to plan ahead before we can buy groceries. While shopping, I need to examine packaging. I'm going to buy fresh meat tomorrow at Pike Place Market (we missed going there on Sunday), so I have to plan ahead for that specifically and be prepared to visit more than one meat stand in order to avoid plastic.

Somehow I get the feeling that we're cheating a bit. We currently live on one-income while I attend school full time, so we had cut out most of the unnecessary consumer-activities that we Americans seem so keen on. Looking ahead, I am going to buy textbooks in the next two weeks. They come shrink-wrapped in plastic for new, so I'll need to pick up used (which is better for the wallet anyway). I need new contacts, which come in individual plastic compartments.

Summary for today: I bought fresh bread in a paper bag (without a plastic window), peanut butter in a jar with a metal lid, milk and cream in paper cartons, and oregano in a personal Ziploc bag. I was at the last stage of a batch of homemade tomato sauce and found that our pot was not deep enough to properly seal the quart-size jars. Carl brought home a canning pot that was wrapped in plastic (which is the start of our "pile"). So far, decent but not 100%.

4 comments:

Scarlet said...

contact lenses are plastic.

Wesa said...

I know. I'm irritated at that, but my vision is soooooooo bad that I can't get around it. My glasses are 3 prescriptions too old to wear without problems.

Scarlet said...

sorry that came out snarky but i didn't mean it to be. I had actually been thinking something else while i sent it, so i apologize for that. I was thinking about this the other day how its nearly impossible if not impossible to get away from plastic. Youd have to walk around in cotton tees and hemp sandals drinking snapple not wearing glasses or sunglasses or other things and ugh, it just kept adding up. I think it's neat that you are trying this. It's crazy to look around and see all the plastics already in our life, that we just can't really get rid of, you know.

Wesa said...

I didn't take it as snark at all! I actually thought about it and realized that I could (instead) get glasses, though I think the lenses are also made from plastic. My contacts are only good for 2-3 weeks, so I'll have to figure something out by then.