PlasticLess.com

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.

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.

It is going to ostensibly be spring soon. I know that many people in northern climates have months to go before things really start to bloom, but I thought I’d talk about picnics anyway.

My childhood memories of family picnics involved a lot of plastic garbage. KFC was often a go to place on the way to the beach. Plastic bags, plastic forks and knives (in their own little bag, of course), plastic tubs of potato salad, buns in their own little bags…

The biggest container was, of course, the bucket. If Kentucky Fried Chicken is something that you must have now and then, why not just get the bucket? You can plan ahead with a jar of your own coleslaw and a jug of iced tea. I used to have a four piece set of enameled metal serving dishes. They get beat up eventually, but they served us well for camping and picnics and also serving groups of children.

I will preface this post with a confession. The story that illustrates my ingenuity and resourcefulness predates my commitment to reducing plastic and I did eventually replace my homemade item with a plastic one.

Back when I lived on a property that has partly forested, I had the crappy little plastic arm that lifts up the chain inside the toilet tank break. Rather than go to the store 40 miles away for a new crappy plastic arm, I looked around in the back yard for a branch that would make a suitable replacement. It actually worked quite well. I did not count the flushes, there were probably less than 10,000. I think it was eventually replaced for social reasons rather than practical ones.

Our vegetable hawker was quite happy to weigh out the produce and replace it in the basket this morning. It was the maiden voyage for this durable basket that is locally made from local materials. The guy who sold it to us did not know the English name for the dark brown plant that is used for these baskets. The light colored material is bamboo.

If can buy eggs either straight from the farmer or in bulk from a wholesaler, a basket or two can come in handy. Our local retailers package eggs in plastic cartons, so we were very interested in finding an alternative. Or first strategy was to reuse the plastic cartons when we bought eggs in bulk from a vegetable truck. The skimpy plastic containers were not designed for reuse.

This basket that is locally made holds a dozen eggs. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer people who know how to make these as time goes by.

I visited Ireland this past weekend and when I stopped for a Fair Trade Organic Coffee at a shop in Dalkey, I had a small disappointment and also some inspiration. I was sitting down in the store to have my coffee and I would have preferred to drink from a reusable cup rather than a disposable one with a plastic lid. I saw a poster at the till touting their refill program for things like toilet cleaner and shampoo. While we enjoyed our coffee, we discussed the possibility of starting a program like this ourselves. There are a lot of benefits to this type of program besides waste reduction. If you source the most environmentally responsible products possible for each purpose, you may be reducing the amount of toxic chemicals that are going down you local drains.

Something that I found been produced and consumed quite profusely in Ireland were spoken words. Opinions, narratives, arguments, philosophies and more were almost overwhelming me while I was in Dublin. When I was researching this post, I landed on this wordy page about the UberGrocer. Words are not biodegradable.