Will the United States ever rid itself of its plastic? (recyclable, heater)
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I recognize that I'm an outlier, because I try to avoid packaging in general. This means I don't drink soda, and I make my own mustard from bulk ingredients. My milk is delivered in glass bottles, which are returned to the dairy for sterilization and re-bottling. The very few jars and bottles that now come through my door will be reused if at all possible. I know that not everyone can live this way, but I'd love to see stores make it easier for customers to adopt a more conservation-minded approach to product packaging, whether glass or plastic, by providing bulk goods and allowing us to refill our own containers.
Last edited by randomparent; 02-04-2014 at 03:31 PM..
While I like to try and reduce what I use and throw out as plastic there is one thing that I haven't heard mentioned. Safety. Drop a plastic jar, it doesn't break or shatter. Not just the inconvenience of having to clean up a mess either.
For example, a few weeks ago I grabbed a glass pickle jar out of the fridge and it slipped and hit the tile floor. Not only did it break, it cut the living daylights out of me after it shattered. Unfortunately, I was also barefoot and stepped on a shard sticking up slicing my foot open. Luckily I didn't need stitches, but salty pickle juice in deeps cuts led to a wee bit of cussing.
randomparent - it is tough to totally live the way you do, but if we each reduce what we are using it adds up quick. I also like buying in bulk rather than small individually wrapped packages. It isn't perfect, but it helps cut down on the waste.
While I like to try and reduce what I use and throw out as plastic there is one thing that I haven't heard mentioned. Safety. Drop a plastic jar, it doesn't break or shatter. Not just the inconvenience of having to clean up a mess either.
For example, a few weeks ago I grabbed a glass pickle jar out of the fridge and it slipped and hit the tile floor. Not only did it break, it cut the living daylights out of me after it shattered. Unfortunately, I was also barefoot and stepped on a shard sticking up slicing my foot open. Luckily I didn't need stitches, but salty pickle juice in deeps cuts led to a wee bit of cussing.
randomparent - it is tough to totally live the way you do, but if we each reduce what we are using it adds up quick. I also like buying in bulk rather than small individually wrapped packages. It isn't perfect, but it helps cut down on the waste.
I think whatever a person can do to live more lightly on the earth -- no matter how small -- is wonderful, Dakster! A handful of years ago I took my first step by buying a few reusable shopping bags. Now, I can go to the grocery and come home without any disposable packaging whatsoever and plenty of ingredients for delicious meals to make for my family. That said, I have plenty of things on my to-do list to reduce my footprint even further that I haven't even begun to tackle, but this is the issue I'm currently working on, so I thought I'd share some of my experiences.
As for breakage, it really hasn't been a problem where the jars and bottles are concerned. Le Parfait jars are astoundingly sturdy. On the other hand, we've had more than our share of broken drinking glasses. Thank goodness for open stock dishware!
Last edited by randomparent; 02-04-2014 at 06:02 PM..
Two other R words that go along with Reduce, Reuse, Recycle are Refuse (i.e., don't accept packaging) and Rot (i.e., compost).
My biggest successes have been in simply refusing to accept packaging when there are viable alternatives. If trash, recyclable or not, doesn't enter the house, I don't have to worry about disposing of it.
I don't want to get rid of the plastic in my life. I like my plastic. Although, I will admit that a computer built all of wood would be a handsome thing.
The local sanitary landfill can recycle most plastic. They take glass to recycle but it gets hauled out to the desert and stored in big piles, because they can't find anyone to take it. It should be easy to recycle, but there is no one close enough that does so. Those piles of glass out there will be there for centuries.
I don't buy a lot of prepared foods, but what plastic jars I do buy get reused over and over. The plastic mayonnaise jars are all reused many times. I buy nuts in big plastic jars, and those get used over and over. Sitting right by my elbow, right at this moment, are two mayonnaise jars full of vegetable seeds. If the dogs knock them off the table yet again, they still won't break.
If food came in jars that could be reused for home canning, I would buy a few of those. But they don't. I do reuse all the glass jars, but I can't reuse them for as many things or as often as I use the plastic ones.
No we won't ever get rid of @#&$ plastic. Yes I remember glass bottles. Practically EVERYTHING is made of stinking plastic these days. Wood, glass and metal used to be the norm. Now you have plastic stocks (on rifles) plastic bottles, plastic snow shovels, plastic toys(rememeber when I was a kid, Tonka toys were all metal, even Matchbox toys were mostly metal), even semi-plastic cars. Plastic, plastic, plastic.......
Nobody here is talking about the endocrine disruption and dioxins created from plastics themselves, or plastics mixed with other chemicals and heavy metals. Have you ever seen how tomato based products attach themselves to some plastics, staining it.. but not glass? Well guess what, the oceans, especially in the convergence zones, are full of plastic particles that have this same attraction with heavy metals. These particles are then ingested by small fish and enter the food web, eventually find their way into our bodies. This is why you see mercury in your tuna, for example. Watch "Trashed" if you need basic information on it. If you think your safer using plastic and living in a plastic covered world over possibly cutting yourself on a piece of broken glass, you might really reconsider it. Plastics are not simply recycled. The molecules don't retain their original structure and they decrease in quality and capacity for reuse. And the other reality is is that most people aren't responsible with their plastics. I know very few individuals that are as serious as I am with recycling and reusing. And if for a moment we pretended that plastics weren't harmful at the molecular level. Mechanically, many species are suffering from lesions, ruptures and impaction from plastics wrongly entering their habitats. Glass, as you know, is actually a naturally occurring substance anyway (volcanic) and it erodes fairly quickly and benignly. I think there is a place for both plastic and glass in the world, but we need to be far more responsible and judicious with plastics than we are currently.
It's true; glass is heavy, and it breaks occasionally. That said, glass cleans easily and can be used indefinitely, which means the recycling issue can be side-stepped completely. I'll admit to getting a workout hauling jars and bottles to and from the grocery, which is why I minimize the number I use for shopping. Usually, it's three large for meat/cheese, 3-4 small for condiments, and two bottles for liquids. They fit very snugly in the sturdy market basket I use for transporting them. All other bulk goes in cloth bags and is transferred to glass storage containers at home.
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