PlasticLess.com

…that would be NOTHING like the ones I used to know. The gifts were often plastic. There was lots of plastic packaging and even many of the decorations were plastic. Bah, Humbug.

If you are about to start your shopping, stop to consider the idea of going the non-gift route. It’s not sacrilegious, as far as I know. If that idea won’t fly, I recommend Lee Valley Tools as a place to buy non-plastic gifts. While you’re there pick up some wooden tree ornaments

Oh and instead of buying a plastic snowman, try making one out of SNOW.

My efforts to reduce plastic have been met with several stumbling blocks. One of them involves running out of credit on my pay as you go cellular phone. I can pay for a 14 digit number at many locations. This number is on a plastic card that comes wrapped in plastic. This is completely avoidable. I can get a number without any material waste at all from the service providers kiosk or I can use my credit card and get topped up over the internet.

One thing that I have done to reduce my plastic waste is to avoid the temptation to get a new phone. I think the constant upgrading of cell phones is one of the most pointless and wasteful practices going on in our culture today. Mine isn’t as old as the one pictured. I didn’t even get one until 2005.

The key aim of this blog is to promote reduced use of plastic. I know as well as anybody that using plastic stuff is almost unavoidable. With this in mind, I am adding a link to some information about which plastics are more hazardous and which ones are less hazardous.

Thegreenguide.com/products/Kitchen/Plastic_Containers

This post is going to be a poorly constructed laundry list of lifestyle alternatives that may reduce plastic consumption even though that is not their primary purpose.

• Going Barefoot: I went beachcombing a couple of years ago and the vast majority of the detritus on the beach consisted of footwear. It was surreal. Spending a proportion of your life barefoot will reduce your consumption of shoes. Many shoes are partly or completely made from plastics.
• Grow a Beard: If you don’t see any available alternatives to plastic razors and shaving cream with plastic caps, consider just not shaving.
• Buy Secondhand Clothing: You would be hard pressed to find a new item of clothing that doesn’t come with some amount of plastic in the form of packaging or labelling.
• Get a Vasectomy: Children are the target market for pointless plastic stuff. Most temporary forms of birth control; involve some plastic packaging.
• Rent Movies Online: If consumers shift away from the bricks and mortar Blockbuster model, fewer DVDs and DVD cases will be manufactured.
• Live Communally: I’m not suggesting that you share a toothbrush with your buddy, but reducing the number of households per capita would reduce the need for a lot of stuff, much of it plastic.
• Go Carless: My spell check doesn’t even think carless is a word, but I did it for about 14 months recently and I am considering doing it again. Cars contain a lot of plastic.
  
  

This blog is about reducing our personal consumption of plastic. So far, it has been a hodgepodge of old ideas and new ideas. Old ideas can make a lot of sense, most of the time. Plastic has only become a ubiquitous part of our lives in the last few generations. Before that, other materials were doing just fine at meeting our needs… or were they?

You need to be very cautious about antique items that contain dangerous materials like lead and mercury. I would suggest a ‘better safe than sorry” approach with regards to old cookware, utensils and serving dishes. Even decorative antiques can pose health risks. Looking into the issue of lead poisoning was very depressing for me. I did not know that a proposed ban on lead paint went before the US House of Representatives in 1910 and that it took 68 years before the Consumer Product Safety Commission eventually banned it. Over 4000 tonnes of lead paint had been slapped on walls and toys and various other things in the interim.

I wonder if the push and pull related to chemicals leaching from plastic drinking containers will drag on that long? Actually, I am certain that it will not. Things move faster in the information age. Several companies removed products containing Bisphenol A as soon as the issue started making headlines. Interestingly, I think the scandal about lead in products made in China may has sensitized the media and consumers in such a way as to catalyze the reaction to Bisphenol A.

Another depressing issue involves the modern low watt light bulb. Al Gore et al. want to ban incandescent light bulbs in homes. The present alternative is a CFL that contains mercury. They also contain more plastic than a typical incandescent bulb.

Proponents of these efficient bulbs say that the fact that they contain more hazardous materials and the fact that they take more energy to produce are more than offset by the energy savings. I am worried about the environmental impact of their production because they are presently made in China. I am also worried about the mercury. There have been advances, with some bulbs having 1/5 the amount of mercury of typical CFLs.

I have personal experience with cheap CFLs that did not have the long life that is touted by their promoters. The answer might be higher standards. Right now, they are trying to compete with standard light bulbs. When legislation kicks in this will be less of an issue.

Teflon is a plastic. Using non-stick cookware also precludes the use of metal utensils. Many people choose to use plastic spatulas. I recommend wooden spatulas.

I have a non-stick pan that was supplied with my rented house. I do not use plastic utensils with it. I prefer wooden spatulas. How many plastic spatulas have you destroyed from excessive heat? When the edge of a wooden spatula gets worn and ragged, you can fix it with a utility knife.

Teflon is the only surface to which a gecko cannot stick. I don’t know of anybody that has gecko and eggs for breakfast, and I think that responsible consumers should avoid consuming Teflon cookware.

Polytetrafluoroethylene was discovered by accident during the first half of the 20th century. My generation is the first for which ‘non-stick’ cookware is not a novelty.

A carcinogen is used in the production of Teflon and Dupont paid residents near its plants $400 million out of court after perfluorooctanoic acid was found in ground water.

Cast iron pans are superior to Teflon coated pans in many ways. The proper care of cast iron pans is slightly more complex than with other cookware, but it is worth the effort.

Bamboo is a versatile material. It’s as easy to grow as grass in many regions. Actually it is grass. We have new shading installed in our yard that was built and installed by the same guys that harvested it.

Credit for this picture goes to www.wasteplastictechnology.blogspot.com, a blog promoting the use of waste plastic as a source of energy. I don’t think that is the best direction to take. It seems like it is just sending the pollutants somewhere else, namely into the air that we breath.

The blog gave me some things to think about, though.

I was reminded of the fact that cruise ships routinely dump their waste at sea. I think responsible consumers should insist on responsible cruise ships.

When I was younger, local strawberries came in wooden boxes. Any that were still reasonably clean would be returned on the next visit. The fruit trucks in my present locality have the local strawberries in plastic pint-sized containers. Strawberries are an impulse purchase for me. The lady that was in line in front of me yesterday knew what she had come for and she came with her own container. The hawker dumped three pints into her container and kept the plastic pints. I assume that he was going to reuse them.

I always look to my fellow shoppers for examples of good and bad ideas.

Most breakfast cereals come in a box that contains a plastic bag. I have mostly stopped buying breakfast cereals, but oatmeal is necessary for one family member. Quaker brand sells a box with no plastic bag, at least they do where I live.

I had been buying Jordans because of the conservation aspect and because they taste better. Jordans has a plastic bag.

If you have the option of buying breakfast cereals in bulk, it is worth considering.