frugal
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news and notes, Day 27 (with a video!)
It’s been 26 days of living without plastic, or trying, and it’s all good. Here’s some of what’s going on. I wrote to the Bear River Valley cereal people, who make delicious natural cereals and have a lot of info about green energy and how they purchase credits to offset their manufacturing. That’s awesome news, and I want to support the company. Here’s the gist of their response about plastic packaging on their cereals: “…When it comes to the packaging of our products, our first priority is to provide consumers with safe and fresh products. The polyethylene bags we use provide our customers with wholesome, quality products without the high…
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trash talk
I warned you we’d have to talk about the bathroom trash can. Put on your gloves and gas mask, because this one is a stinky topic. What’s in your bathroom trash can? Compostables? Recyclables? Toxic waste? Biohazards? Betcha there’s some plastic in there, too. I was going to photograph what came out of our bathroom trash, but I got a little shy and a little grossed out, so never mind. Just use your imagination, and follow along as we parse what’s plastic and what’s actually garbage. Cotton swabs, aka Q-tips. Buy the kind with a paper/cardboard stick. Those can be composted or will disintegrate in landfill, while the ones with…
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green guilt, green quilt
The book, Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, has been recommended to me a couple of times and I wanted to offer it in case anyone else wants to read it. It’s on my request list at the library; I’ll post a review when I have read it. Yesterday was a hot one — hot and smoggy, so they declared it a Spare the Air Day: don’t drive, don’t BBQ, don’t have wood fires, and try to keep energy use low. But I was in my car, driving up the highway to meet the roofer at our soon-to-be house, and man, it was really and truly hot on the road and smoggy in…
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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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what’s good enough for me —
—isn’t always good enough for others. I think. I kind of failed as far as plastic and procuring food for The Boy’s 7th grade picnic tomorrow (the last day of school, at last!). They were desperate for anything for the kids, and there was low parent participation over this event — the only thing they had was tomatoes. There’s something like 150 7th graders. I looked at the food list and volunteered to take brownies, some beverages, hot dogs and buns, and potato salad. I had some potatoes, and figured I’d just grab a package of hot dogs. It’s $1 for eight, right? Heh heh. Sure, for the plastic-wrapped hot dogs,…
