PlasticLess.com

I look for news about plastic reduction regularly. Today Fox is talking about how ConAgra, the makers of many different brands of TV dinners is making a change to recycled trays. This should result in 8 million fewer pounds of trash.

Convincing consumers to stop buying these convenience meals would have a much bigger impact. Making meals from scratch is almost always cheaper and more nutritious than a TV dinner. There is this thing called a sandwich that can be created, stored and consumed without the use of plastic.

I am speaking, of course, of unsliced bread.

I can get a loaf from the corner shop without any packaging. It might not be quite that easy everywhere, but small bakeries can be found in most cities in North America. If you grew up on sliced bread, you might have to practice a bit before you master the use of a bread knife. You may also need to get your knife sharpened.

One local bakery does not add preservatives. This takes some getting used to as well. The trick is to avoid over purchasing. French toast is a great way to make use of day old (or two days old) bread. Look for syrup in a metal container, make your own syrup, or just use fresh fruit instead.

…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.

In 2003, National Geographic put a well written article about the danger that plastic shopping bags pose to our planet. If you do a search for plastic bags, this article ranks just below a company that sells the bags. I ask everyone who blogs about this topic to provide a link to the National Geographic article.

I think the plastic bag issue is going to become more and more high profile as time goes on. I think there may also be a blip of interest during the summer as people are getting out into what they expect to be pristine outdoor recreation areas and they find bags blowing/floating around.

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.
  
  

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.

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.