Week 21 Results: 13.8 oz of plastic

What a week it was. A terrible oil spill. A Green Festival. I’ll write about both in the next post. For now, here’s the weekly plastic tally:

Non-recyclable items used this week but purchased before the plastic project began:

• 6 Refresh Endura single-use eye drop containers (#4 plastic).
• 1 outer wrapper from a box of Refresh Endura eye drops.
• 1 cap from a 21-oz bottle of Win High Performance Sport detergent. See below.
• 1 piece of clear packing tape.
• 1 plastic wrapper from a Trader Joe’s Chile Lime chicken burger. This is my very last frozen food that was stashed in the refrigerator at work. No more emergency frozen food for me. I’ve got to be really diligent about bringing food for lunch now.
• 1 skanky old plastic cutting board (#4 plastic). Even though it’s #4 plastic, I don’t think anyone will recycle it, so it goes into plastic purgatory. I’ve got a replacement cutting board, which I’m planning to write about in another post this week. Stay tuned.

Recyclable items used up this week but bought before the project began:

• 21-oz bottle of Win High Performance Sport detergent (#2 plastic). We still have two more bottles of this detergent to use up. We only use it on athletic wear because it really gets the odors out. Wondering what natural product to switch to when this is gone. This bottle goes into our curbside bin here in Oakland.

And that’s all the old stuff. Now for the new plastic waste.

• 1 wrapper from a block of Loleta Cheese Company organic sharp white cheddar.
• 1 small plastic bag from an EBMUD free faucet aerator. It’s always interesting to see the plastic packaging used for these “green” items.
• 1 plastic cap from a glass bottle of Straus organic milk.
• 1 bit of plastic from a bunch of organic fair trade bananas.
• 2 plastic wrappers from a package of organic buffalo meat. I didn’t realize the butcher was going to wrap the meat in plastic inside the coated paper wrapper. I’ll be more careful next time.
• 1 Culligan water test kit. There were several pieces to the kit, but I’m just counting them all as one. We tested our water to see if we really need to have a water filter in the first place. So far, it turns out there really isn’t any detectable chlorine, which is what I was concerned about. I still have to get the results back on the lead test.

That’s it for the week. The cutting board made up most of the weight. I’d just love to have a week in which all my plastic can fit in the palm of my hand. Could it happen this week coming up? We’ll see.
 

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