sustainable living
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my family doesn’t hate me yet
Perhaps they fear me. I don’t know, but this is what happened yesterday. Adult daughter and her boyfriend come into the house bearing a pizza in a box and stop when they see me. “Can we have this?” she asks. She opens the box, shows me the pizza and the accompanying foil packets of Parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes. Green waste and recycling, no plastic at all. “Yes,” I said. “Enjoy.” And they did. Julia 3, Plastic 2 Mr. Husband had a no-plastic adventure yesterday as well. He had purchased some foot spray from Target, but all four cans were defective (that happens a lot with Target products, I find,…
- Challenge Update, frugal, green, My World and Welcome to It, no waste, plastic, recycling, sustainable living
Punked by Plastic
I was punked by plastic. In my grocery shopping adventures Thursday, I cheerfully bought two (minuscule and pricey) glass jars of mustard, and when putting them away, discovered Ambient Plastic (unnecessary extra plastic) bands around the lids. Why? Why is this necessary? (insert existential yawp here.) I opened the waxed paper bag of salami I bought at the deli counter yesterday, after expressly forbidding the use of plastic in my order, and found the thin blue plastic sheet she used to load up the bag and not get her hand greasy. I guess they always throw that into the customer’s package? I wonder if they couldn’t use some tongs or a fork,…
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My family is going to hate me
More so than usual, I mean. And why? Because the Plastic Purge has begun. Today, June 1, 2011, I am going to do what I can for 30 days (and then into infinity) to eradicate the use of plastic in our lives. (cue Mission Impossible theme song…) I just posted this groovy sign in the kitchen. I have removed the trash can from the house. No garbage in the kitchen. See, as a green zealot, I’m always going through the trash because someone inevitably puts something compostable in the garbage (this afternoon — paper napkins, a pair of wooden chopsticks). And this after browbeating my family for at least four years. I frequently…
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An aside, and then prep for the PP
Dude, look what I found… my novel, years of blood, sweat, toil, angst and actual lived history: available used for $3.28. *sigh* It’s better than when I found it used on the discard pile at the Alameda Friends of the Library sale last year (I know who you are — I saw the inscription…). Anyway — fame and infamy. It’s everything it’s cracked up to be. *facepalm* But never mind that. We’re working on the Plastic Purge, or getting ready for it. And everywhere I look, there’s plastic. Plastic! My magazine came wrapped in plastic. My vitamins are sealed in plastic. My shampoo bottle is plastic. My fish fillets are vacuum-packed…
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green day
This is how I spent my day, but it’s not unusual. It’s fairly typical of how we live these days, and I wanted to give a baseline of how life is at Chez Tracey before the Plastic Purge begins. Note my regal attire, left, as I hold my royal scepter and show off my tiara. It’s not easy being the Queen of Green, you know. Outside (photo): I’m in our vegetable garden, which I’ve grown every year except the handful of years I lived in apartments in San Francisco and elsewhere. But even on my apartment balcony in Concord, a jillion years ago, I grew tomatoes, herbs and strawberries. What can I say? I’m a farmgirl…
