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It’s not possible to be completely plastic free where we live. It’s not like I can swing by a farmers market to buy loose lettuce and berries on a whim.
We recycle as much as possible but I wish the manufacturers / stores would use less plastic in packaging. Especially those awful clamshell containers that our town doesn’t even recycle for some reason. Costco is the worse, if you’re a member - write to them and demand less plastic.
And why does Olay wrap their cream in a clamshell inside a paper box? That’s just wasteful. (Stopped buying it for this reason.)
At work, we have a kitchenette with a sink but still many people use plastic utensils and disposable cups. There are mugs on a shelf! If everyone just made a little effort we’d be better off.
They got one of them water dispensing fountains at work so rather than use the Styrofoam cups in which I might have gone through 5 a shift, I have a big glass in my locker I fill. It helps the water is filtered, the perfect temperature, and the best tasting water in the plant.
At home I make crystal light and have re-used the same gallon jug 20 times now... or I simply drink from the tap or my berkey knockoff.
Start with false assumptions and you're bound to wind up with false conclusions. We could be just as easily be discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
The fact is, the US is on a course to turn 1000 sq miles (out of a total area of 19,000,000 sq mi) piled to a height (depth) of 100 ft into garbage dumps over the next 100years. (Mind you, most of these sites will be re-purposed into recreational or natural areas when filled.).... meanwhile, we are losing 1500 sq mi of natural habitat to development every year.
What should we really be talking about, if we're concerned about the environment & nature?
Heres something that irks me: in my grocery store(large chain), organic eggs come in a plastic carton while factory eggs come in a cardboard carton. Now how am I suppose to choose which is better? To me this is just stupid. The organic egg producers dont see that by using plastic they are polluting the environment? Shouldnt the organic eggs be in a cardboard carton that can be recycled?
The plastic containers can be recycled, the cardboard ones can be composted but typically their cardboard is not the type to be recycled (as it often has been already).
BTW, many local farmers markets have local eggs in cardboard containers, and some will even let you bring back your own containers to save one. Also, local (usually unpasterurized) eggs taste better.
We don't use any of those at home. I wish somebody could paint a picture of how grocery stores looked like in the 40s and 50s.
Oh I meant when not at home, I had sort of assumed those posting in the green forum avoided single use plastics at home. I carry a bamboo set of utensils and a collapsible straw with me out or at work so as to avoid those types of things.
They got one of them water dispensing fountains at work so rather than use the Styrofoam cups in which I might have gone through 5 a shift, I have a big glass in my locker I fill. It helps the water is filtered, the perfect temperature, and the best tasting water in the plant.
At home I make crystal light and have re-used the same gallon jug 20 times now... or I simply drink from the tap or my berkey knockoff.
I highly recommend a double walled stainless steel bottle. They really, really work at keeping water cold and they don't taste weird at all.
Without plastic people will have to use what they did in the pre 1970s , like glass pop and milk bottles and wax paper covering their meat and vegetables , wax paper straws and soda cups in wax paper and news paper of fried foods , large brown paper bags...... wonder how sterile that was ................. Then nations like China and Japan and some other nations throw their plastic in the Ocean where fish and whales swallow the plastic , and the world blames everyone
Without plastic people will have to use what they did in the pre 1970s , like glass pop and milk bottles and wax paper covering their meat and vegetables , wax paper straws and soda cups in wax paper and news paper of fried foods , large brown paper bags...... wonder how sterile that was ................. Then nations like China and Japan and some other nations throw their plastic in the Ocean where fish and whales swallow the plastic , and the world blames everyone
Waxed carboard cartons for milk. It composts. Soda in aluminum cans packed in cardboard boxes, if you drink it (my family doesn't). For drinks on the go, purchase a stainless steel bottle and/or a reusable coffee cup. (Klean Kanteen makes great ones.) Meat, poultry, and seafood can be wrapped in wax butcher paper at the store and stored in glass refrigerator/freezer containers once home, or meat can be seasoned and left open on a plate in the fridge prior to cooking the same day. (The environment of the fridge dries the surface of meat, which is better for cooking anyway.) Produce and bulk foods go in washable fabric bags. I have about two-dozen of them for this purpose. Once home, I transfer the contents to clean, tight-sealing, glass pantry jars. I carry my groceries home in large, washable, fabric bags or in a sturdy woven grass basket with leather-wrapped handles. Once home, the bags that directly contained food go in the washing machine. The basket is fantastic, btw. Holds way more than a standard grocery bag without tipping and spilling things all over the trunk. For things like potato chips, I've discovered that a couple of local restaurants, which make way better chips than anything I can get from the grocery, are very happy to fill a paper bag for me. I store the chips in a large penny candy jar on a pantry shelf once I get home, and I then compost the paper bag. For plastic containers that cannot be avoided, I buy the largest possible size and make sure to recycle. I'll tell you what, though, the easiest way to avoid plastic packaging at the grocery is just to adopt a whole foods diet. It's the damn snack foods that none of us should really be eating anyway creating the vast majority of the non-recyclable plastic waste in our kitchens.
In debates like this often one side is deemed to be all bad and the other all good. I came across an article weighing the pros and cons of paper and plastic bags.
Peanut butter jars are perfect for storing nuts, bolts, screws, etc.
We keep cloth grocery bags in the trunk of the car. They are always there when we need them.
Where do you buy straws that are not plastic?
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