Challenge Update
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the Ayatollah of plastic
Do you think I’m judging you? By the looks on people’s faces these days, they do. Since I started the Plastic Purge, just about everyone who talks to me says, “Well, it was plastic, but…” or, “You would have hated it, there was so much plastic…” and, “I know it’s plastic, but…”. There are the more aggressive folks who kind of snarl at me, “Is that plastic? Are you drinking out of a plastic cup? Is your Bandaid plastic?” It’s kind of funny. I suppose I’m making them think about their own choices, and that might make them a little uncomfortable. I’m not really the Ayatollah of plastic, though. I’m just a…
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winning
Here are a couple of wins for the record. 1) The Sunday newspaper came with no plastic wrap, per my instructions. (I forgot to mention it earlier in the week.) 2) I cooked a lot today — all of it without Teflon or the plastic utensils you need to use to avoid scratching the finish. In fact, I took all the plastic spoons, spatulas and sporks out of the drawer and all of the Teflon-coated pans, pots, cookie sheets and muffin tins out of the cabinet, and they are all ready to donate. My family is going to hate me. 3) The 7th-grade picnic went off without a hitch. I wrote a…
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flea markets and thrift stores
I spent Sunday meandering around the ginormous antiques fair in Alameda and Monday I did research at several local thrift stores. In all of my travels, I looked at how much plastic is discarded and reused, as well as what alternatives there are for non-plastic use in the home. The items in the photo are some of my finds. I’ll name them, clockwise: ice tray, canisters, cheese grater, nut chopper with new red handle, soap-chip swisher, lawn sprinkler head, jar grabber and fireplace bread toaster. The item in the center is a wall-mounted bottle opener (obviously not mounted anywhere yet). As I start to weed out some of the plastics in our…
- Challenge Update, food, green, My World and Welcome to It, plastic, random, rants, sustainable living
just one word
Sorry I missed yesterday — family comes before work (otherwise, what’s the point of work?) Friday I spent most of my day at home, working on various projects, and did not come across much plastic just drifting across my path. I was sewing, and reached for a new spool of thread. That’s when I saw that it was sheathed in plastic, I guess to keep it clean or from unspooling. Funny, the more expensive brands of thread don’t use plastic; just the cheap thread, those that I grabbed 5 for $1. And guess what? Made in China. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m guessing that it’s difficult or impossible…
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fresh fruit & veg
One of my favorite weekly outings is to the Alameda Farmers’ Market — we’re lucky enough to have a twice-weekly market about a mile or so from my house. Yes, it’s a bike ride away. I take my own bags, fill up the panniers and pedal home again. Easy peasy. Even better, none of the produce that I buy at the farmers’ market has even one of those stupid fruit labels on it. Plastic! ptooey! There was a funny Rhymes with Orange comic printed a few years ago that cracked me up: The lady is sitting in front of an x-ray machine and the doctor sees all these fruit labels…