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Our oceans are filling up with plastic: plastic that harms wildlife and never biodegrades; plastic that enters the food chain and leaches toxic chemicals. This blog is a record of my journey to live with as little unnecessary plastic as possible. Won't you join me? Fake plastic fish may be cute, but if we keep filling up our oceans with plastic, they could be the only kind we have left.... |
Week 43 Results: 5.9 oz of plastic waste.
I know I’m late getting this post up today. But I’ve been working my little butt off this weekend on a project that I’m hoping to announce tomorrow.
The lesson of this week’s tally is that I must always remember to specify what kind of packaging I want when people send me things. Those free kids books I wrote about last week… several of them came in plastic envelopes. Here’s the tally.
Items purchased before the plastic project began:
- 1 3.5oz container of Fudge hair putty & lid. No idea what kind of plastic it is. There’s no recycling symbol. So, yes, I’ve been using hair putty in a plastic container. But it’s stuff I already had. And I have one more that I bought early last year that I’m using up right now. I haven’t bought hairspray since I used up my last container, and right now my hair is at that awkward in-between stage where it needs something to give it a little hold or I look like an insane person (which some might argue that I am.) Why am I letting it grow out? Ask Terrible Person. :-)
Now for the new items:
- 1 plastic FedEx envelope & piece of bubble wrap. These are kind of ironic. Anna used these materials to ship my North Pacific Gyre sample. She apologized profusely. She’d rushed them to FedEx to ship to me in time for my presentation and had no time to find any other kind of material. So now I’ve got this plastic. But I forgive her. Anna rocks. (Somehow I forgot to include them in an earlier tally.)
- 2 plastic wrappers from two 24-can cases of Instinct cat food. April is the cruelest, and busiest, month for an accountant who is involved in just way too many things. My goal for May: start making food for those cats and stop buying all these @%$&*#$% cans!
- 2 Tyvek envelopes used to ship Michael Recycle. Yes, Tyvek is recyclable by sending back to Dupont. But I should have asked the P/R person to use paper or cardboard.
- 2 little price tag holder thingies from some Goodwill purchases on Saturday. It’s so weird. I haven’t shopped for clothes in over a year. Why did I feel the need to do it during Crunchy Chicken’s Buy Nothing Challenge month? Um… because she said it was okay to buy used stuff and I just had to push it? Because my current clothes are so old and raggedy that I can’t even donate them in good conscience? Because the weather shot up to 85 degrees on Saturday and the heat went to my head?
Okay, that’s it. Stay tuned for an announcement tomorrow. And also, later this week, remind me to tell you what I learned from my cats this weekend.
Comments
Comments
13 Comments on Week 43 Results: 5.9 oz of plastic waste.
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Tracey on
Mon, 14th Apr 2008 1:20 pm
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terrible person on
Mon, 14th Apr 2008 1:40 pm
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terrible person on
Mon, 14th Apr 2008 1:43 pm
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Anonymous on
Mon, 14th Apr 2008 2:41 pm
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arduous on
Mon, 14th Apr 2008 3:27 pm
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Flea on
Mon, 14th Apr 2008 4:23 pm
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CindyW on
Mon, 14th Apr 2008 4:39 pm
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Jennifer on
Mon, 14th Apr 2008 6:04 pm
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Fr. Peter Doodes on
Tue, 15th Apr 2008 12:30 am
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Cooking on
Tue, 15th Apr 2008 2:30 am
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The Green Cat on
Tue, 15th Apr 2008 11:17 am
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arduous on
Tue, 15th Apr 2008 5:08 pm
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Green Tallahassee on
Tue, 15th Apr 2008 7:08 pm
Oh, and what is in your hair putty? If you were here, I’d reuse your container, and try to recreate the product for you in my evil laboratory.
San Francisco will be accepting more plastic for recycling! But will they just send it to China?
Make your own cat food?!? – I am so proud of you!!! Good luck, do your research (or at least find someone who knows what they are doing to tell you how to make it). You could probably start a whole other blog on making pet food, and I know it will be a challenge to make it without acquiring plastic. But good for you. Your kitties will just feel the love.
~Molly in NH
Michael, thank you SO MUCH for that link about plastic bags. I’m off to write my legislator right now!!
Oh very cool. Here in Tulsa, the population’s not very “green”. We recycle, but I wind up just reusing a lot of plastic, mainly in the garden. Still new to all of this and glad I found your blog.
I’ve always found it a mixed blessing when it comes to recycling plastics. Sometimes I think being able to recycle plastic falsely make people feel that it is okay to use plastics, because it can be recycled (at least for a while, I thought that way). The truth is far from that. When my husband buys milk, he gets the one in plastic jugs, not in paper cartons or in glass jars. His rationale is glass jars are too heavy, easier to break and and ending up in our garage rather than going back to the stores. Paper carton just gets landfilled. So plastic seems to be lesser evil. I can argue the case for glass jars. But paper carton, not sure. However, if plastic jugs were not recyclable, he would be far more inclined to buy milk in glass jars. Just my observation.
If you ever find a good homemade hair putty, I’d love to have the recipe… I, too, keep my hair super short. I cut it myself, but need some “junk” to keep it from looking like a helmut with bed lines. I’ve saved my last glass putty jar to hold a hopeful homemade concoction…
We are trying as well, will be getting it lower and great to find so many others as concerned as well!
http://environmentalideas.blogspot.com/2008/02/95-oz-of-rubbish.html
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The photo on this one reminded me of something–all of the cats I have ever had have liked to lick plastic bags. Not sure if you would have noticed this since you have so little plastic in your life. Do your kitties like to lick the plastic? Anyone have any idea why cats do this?
I just wanted to share with you the email I sent to my state legislator regarding the plastic bag recyling bill:
Dear [Assemblyperson]
I urge you strongly to support the recycling fee on plastic bags. I am sure you are aware of the problems plastic bags cause – from the plastic ocean in the Pacific, to the wildlife killed by plastic bags. Not only that, it takes oil to produce plastic bags. Should we really be wasting such a precious commodity on something that’s going to be thrown out after one use?
The fact is, most plastic bags aren’t recycled. In addition, plastic bags are difficult to recycle because they get caught in the machines, and because different stores use different types of plastic to make their bags. As a result, plastic bags can only be downcycled. That is, plastic bags aren’t recycled in the true sense. A plastic bag cannot be recycled into another plastic bag. Instead, plastic bags are turned into other things, such as stuffing for jackets, and those things eventually end up the landfill. Thus, by recycling plastic, we are only delaying its progression to the landfill.
Thank you for your time. Let’s work together to reduce plastic bag consumption.
Best,
[Arduous]
A group of us have been inspired to also reduce our plastic consumption. We have agreed to wear a week’s worth of the plastics we have used on Earth Day to display how much plastic we really use!
I also love the graph, tracking your plastic.
Cara
at Green Tallahassee
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