One Week Without Plastic (Part 2)
Feb 23rd, 2010 by sherri
I’m preparing to spend one week without buying or throwing away anything plastic. This experiment was inspired by the movie “Tapped,” which artfully shows the terrible environmental damages, health risks and social conflicts caused by the mass manufacture and waste of plastics.
The first step is to list all of the necessities I typically use in a week, and to figure out how to obtain each of these without plastic wrappers, bags or bottles. Here’s a first stab at the list:
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Starting from the top:
#1: Bottled water
The bottled water problem solved itself! As I was sitting watching the movie “Tapped,” I got thirsty. I figured it would be pretty tasteless to buy a plastic bottle of water while watching a movie about the damage caused by plastic bottles of water. Fortunately, the producer and director of the film were right outside the theater, armed with dozens of stainless steel water bottles (“Klean Kanteen“) for $10 each. Now I’m armed my trendy steel water bottle, which fits as nicely in my bike rack as it does in my car’s cupholder. On top of that, given that I was typically buying one $1.50 bottle of water a day, I’ve saved roughly $547.50 for the year already. Wow…
Off to a good start! Unfortunately, the next item, “Yogurt,” looks a lot more daunting…
| Sherri Davidoff |
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Yogurt actually shouldn’t be that tough, if you’re willing to make your own.
Depending on where you live, you might be able to get yogurt in reusable ceramic mug-things, that you can take back to the store after use.
For the other stuff, think about ways you can buy them in bulk and put them in glass jars. You can get mason jars for about a buck in a lot of markets.
Ice cream as a necessity – nice touch
Eggs come in plastic!
I never gave into bottled water. I grew up on well water and the water provided by my local city has always been tasty. I have a nice stainless bottle at home and work. I just turn the tap, its basically free.
Yogurt is sometimes available in glass packaging.
Check out http://fakeplasticfish.com/ if you haven’t yet..
The book “Clean: The Humble Art of Zen Cleansing” by Michael DeJong will cover the detergents angle. It lists simple recipes for recreating most chemical compositions we use as daily cleansing agents.
Travel Light
Hey, so are we going to see an update? Did you find a way to purchase most of these products? My local grocery sells meat and lunchmeat in paper wrappers, so I can at least get away from plastic there. rice comes in a cardboard box. one of my local stores also carries milk in glass bottles, and eggs all come in paper cartons.
As far as TP, you may be SOL.
no pun intended.
Lots of updates coming! Just haven’t had a chance to write in a little while. (We’re in Orlando launching the first 5-day run of our Network Forensics class, and prepping 50 netbooks for students during the last couple of weeks was crazy.) All kinds of developments regarding yogurt production, valiant attempts to obtain non-plasticy non-UHT milk, experiments with powdered milk in paper bags, and more…
Sherri,
Try this out. For the past several months I’ve been switching my plastic food storage containers for glass ones with rubber lids. You can find them a lot of places that sell kitchen stuff. They’re of course a little more costly up front but have saved us a lot of money in having to constantly replace worn out plastic, they are easier to keep clean since they don’t stain and you can reheat food in them without worrying about the stuff plastic gives off.
Regarding the bread, many times our local bakery has their bread in paper bags instead of plastic.
If the oil you meant is cooking oil, most of the olive oil I buy is in glass bottles with metal lids. Of course I guess there is part of the inside spout that’s plastic though.
I can see this experiment would prove very challenging. I applaud your efforts and hope to hear how it all came out. Maybe I’ll have incentive to try a few more things myself. How exactly does powdered milk in paper bag work? Sounds interesting. Hope your class went well and the craziness has subsided.
Hi Sherri
You’ve gone quiet on us… I hope all is OK with you… please, let us know when you’ll be back!
Maybe the plastic lobby got her? o.O
We’ll send a rescue team….
Sherri,
Please don’t stop writing. We’ll join forces and get back at the plastic lobby. Promise.
Take care.
Weelllll… If we look at this logically. I have never seen, short of a few interesting handmade steampunk projects, a keyboard made of anything other than plastics. So, if we extrapolate from that base, perhaps, the week without plastics project was simply a lifechanging success, and we should all be extremely happy for Sherri.
Congratulations Sheri on your new plateau of enlightening reality exploration. We need not miss you for we shall all meet again upon that further shore. (tips hat, salutes, bows)
Be Well, Do Well, and Grow
You haven’t updated in more than a year, so I have unsubscribed from your blog.