Plastic free July (lol yeah right)
So let me tell you a little something about plastic: it's super convenient, light, durable, can contain corrosive liquids safely and will protect produce in the refrigerator. It will not break when your toddler helps you unload the dishwasher and drops it on the ground. It can be made for fractions of pennies and provides a super cheap watertight container for your takeout lunch. You can get little fun toys for your kids friends that attend his birthday party, and they cost little so you don't feel bad about tossing them in the garbage.
It is also slowly taking over the world.
Let's think about how pervasive plastics are.
The mouse I'm using is made of plastic.
My morning disposable coffee cup is lined with plastic so it won't leak.
The diapers I put on my baby this morning (probably the worst offender of all the things we use on a daily basis) are made of plastic polymers, which absorb water up to 300 times its own weight, allowing a deep sleep and clean bottom all night long. They are convenient and amazing.
The gum I like (aspartame free!) comes in plastic + aluminum pill-type packaging.
For lunch, I use a service called Meal Pal, which is awesome because you can get takeout from nearby restaurants on a subscription plan and get pretty much half-off regular price. However, they want you to take the food and go, so all the food is wrapped in take-out containers, most of which are plastic. (there are some exceptions!)
I get a bottle of tea, in a PET (polyeurethane) bottle, and some planter's nuts because I'm trying to avoid sugar. These nuts are in the light, film-like vinyl wrapping.
On the way home I have to get shampoo and conditioner and body wash (I like Pantene, it makes my hair so soft!) I get big bottles because they are the most cost-effective. Basically, giant jugs of plastic. Not to mention the usual plastic toothbrushes and disposable razors.
I stop by the fruit guy's stand on the way home. I forgot my cotton shopping bag, but he has plastic ones, so it's fine. I get strawberries, blueberries, apples, oranges, all which will be consumed in a day or two by my family with an intense love for fruit and smoothies. The berries are in plastic clamshell containers.
Meat for dinner is shrink-wrapped and frozen. It's from a local farm that I bought at the farmer's market... still wrapped in plastic.
I preserve the leftovers with plastic wrap, scrub the dishes with a plastic scrubber, wash the dishes with gel detergent in a big plastic bottle.
Yikes.
So basically, on a 1 - 10 of plastic use, I'm way way up there. Maybe a 9/10 of all the stuff I use has some plastic affiliated with it.
Apparently we can't even recycle plastic (especially opaque dyed heavy stuff) particularly well. It's not biodegradable. single use plastic bags are a huge nuisance for NYC cleanup crews because they block storm drains and end up in trees. And then they go on to leach toxins into water... lovely!
http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/materials_minerals_pdf/dplasticbagreport2017.pdf
...so how do we escape this stuff? Well, I read about 'Plastic Free July' as a movement to stop 'single use plastics' at least, for an entire month. July is halfway over, and I have basically not cut out anything, but I have become more conscious of my use, and I'm starting some steps.
follow my journey from the most terrible plastic user as I try to get a little greener. :D
-----
Part one: Ok, so now what?
I'm going to go the tried-and-true method of surmounting an insurmountable problem by cutting it into chunks and focusing on one item at a time that I use the most at a time.
First item to avoid: plastic bags.
They are everywhere but probably the most avoidable, and it looks like we're going to have a plastic bag ban in NYC pretty soon anyway.
Problem: We use plastic bags as garbage bags to throw away the stinkiest offenders in the garbage during the hot humid summer months daily, so we do get some use out of them. If we don't have those bags, what will we use for garbage bags?
Solution: Starting to collect the 'stinkiest garbage' as compost.
This is not that super convenient, as we live in a high-rise apartment and don't have access to compost on a daily basis. There is a farmer's market near our house on sunday mornings that has compost bins.
I stopped using our freezer ice bucket because the ice maker is a huge electricity hog that nearly doubled our electricity bill- we just have a bucket in the freezer sitting there empty, so I'm using it for compost scraps now.
I collect the food scraps from dinner and they go in the freezer. I took the scraps to the compost heap. So I saved maybe one bag per day of bio-degradable stinky plastic bag garbage.
Problem 1: some things are biodegradable but huge and will quickly take over the freezer if we compost it all, like corn husks, watermelon rinds.
Problem 2 but there are still some things that can't be composted, namely: meat, fish and fish bones, cat poo, used diapers, feminine hygiene products, kitty litter liners, um, probably other stuff. So those are still going in plastic bags.
I do have a lot of cotton bags and I have to remember to put them *everywhere*, in my purse, in the stroller, backpack, etc. But I brought the reusable bags to the farmer's market last week and avoided like six bags last week so felt a little better.
BABY STEPS PEOPLE!!
...oh god this is hard.
Next post: coffee! Should be easy right? hahahaha yeah right
It is also slowly taking over the world.
Let's think about how pervasive plastics are.
The mouse I'm using is made of plastic.
My morning disposable coffee cup is lined with plastic so it won't leak.
The diapers I put on my baby this morning (probably the worst offender of all the things we use on a daily basis) are made of plastic polymers, which absorb water up to 300 times its own weight, allowing a deep sleep and clean bottom all night long. They are convenient and amazing.
The gum I like (aspartame free!) comes in plastic + aluminum pill-type packaging.
For lunch, I use a service called Meal Pal, which is awesome because you can get takeout from nearby restaurants on a subscription plan and get pretty much half-off regular price. However, they want you to take the food and go, so all the food is wrapped in take-out containers, most of which are plastic. (there are some exceptions!)
I get a bottle of tea, in a PET (polyeurethane) bottle, and some planter's nuts because I'm trying to avoid sugar. These nuts are in the light, film-like vinyl wrapping.
On the way home I have to get shampoo and conditioner and body wash (I like Pantene, it makes my hair so soft!) I get big bottles because they are the most cost-effective. Basically, giant jugs of plastic. Not to mention the usual plastic toothbrushes and disposable razors.
I stop by the fruit guy's stand on the way home. I forgot my cotton shopping bag, but he has plastic ones, so it's fine. I get strawberries, blueberries, apples, oranges, all which will be consumed in a day or two by my family with an intense love for fruit and smoothies. The berries are in plastic clamshell containers.
Meat for dinner is shrink-wrapped and frozen. It's from a local farm that I bought at the farmer's market... still wrapped in plastic.
I preserve the leftovers with plastic wrap, scrub the dishes with a plastic scrubber, wash the dishes with gel detergent in a big plastic bottle.
Yikes.
So basically, on a 1 - 10 of plastic use, I'm way way up there. Maybe a 9/10 of all the stuff I use has some plastic affiliated with it.
Apparently we can't even recycle plastic (especially opaque dyed heavy stuff) particularly well. It's not biodegradable. single use plastic bags are a huge nuisance for NYC cleanup crews because they block storm drains and end up in trees. And then they go on to leach toxins into water... lovely!
http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/materials_minerals_pdf/dplasticbagreport2017.pdf
...so how do we escape this stuff? Well, I read about 'Plastic Free July' as a movement to stop 'single use plastics' at least, for an entire month. July is halfway over, and I have basically not cut out anything, but I have become more conscious of my use, and I'm starting some steps.
follow my journey from the most terrible plastic user as I try to get a little greener. :D
-----
Part one: Ok, so now what?
I'm going to go the tried-and-true method of surmounting an insurmountable problem by cutting it into chunks and focusing on one item at a time that I use the most at a time.
First item to avoid: plastic bags.
They are everywhere but probably the most avoidable, and it looks like we're going to have a plastic bag ban in NYC pretty soon anyway.
Problem: We use plastic bags as garbage bags to throw away the stinkiest offenders in the garbage during the hot humid summer months daily, so we do get some use out of them. If we don't have those bags, what will we use for garbage bags?
Solution: Starting to collect the 'stinkiest garbage' as compost.
This is not that super convenient, as we live in a high-rise apartment and don't have access to compost on a daily basis. There is a farmer's market near our house on sunday mornings that has compost bins.
I stopped using our freezer ice bucket because the ice maker is a huge electricity hog that nearly doubled our electricity bill- we just have a bucket in the freezer sitting there empty, so I'm using it for compost scraps now.
I collect the food scraps from dinner and they go in the freezer. I took the scraps to the compost heap. So I saved maybe one bag per day of bio-degradable stinky plastic bag garbage.
Problem 1: some things are biodegradable but huge and will quickly take over the freezer if we compost it all, like corn husks, watermelon rinds.
Problem 2 but there are still some things that can't be composted, namely: meat, fish and fish bones, cat poo, used diapers, feminine hygiene products, kitty litter liners, um, probably other stuff. So those are still going in plastic bags.
I do have a lot of cotton bags and I have to remember to put them *everywhere*, in my purse, in the stroller, backpack, etc. But I brought the reusable bags to the farmer's market last week and avoided like six bags last week so felt a little better.
BABY STEPS PEOPLE!!
...oh god this is hard.
Next post: coffee! Should be easy right? hahahaha yeah right
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