Our Attempts to Taper down our Plastic use
It’s report-card time. I’m giving myself a mark on the no-bag month of February. C+. We were about 50/50 which would normally be an F-, but we learned a lot (& my opinion is that should I take an exam NOW we’d get a C+). I will say that our awareness has intensified, not simply on the grocery bag front, but gahly. plastic is EVERYWHERE! It really is the main thing we throw-away around these parts, and it’s essentially unavoidable. Grocery bags are just the tip of the ice-berg.
We’ve picked up a few new tricks though and are implementing several small changes this month to help ease the severity of our participation in plastic consumption; end big sentence.
Our One Small Change is to let this plastic thing invade our lives in other ways. Ziploc bags we use a lot of. We freeze much of our garden in the summer and fall, not to mention the bags used to freeze the deer meat we were blessed with this year. We’re looking into alternatives, any ideas? Part of the problem is freezing isn’t really the most efficient way to save (think about all that energy loss), but we’re not in a place where root-cellaring is an option; perhaps down the road. In the mean time we preserve in cans & our ice-box.
and that blahg-y feeling is lifting. I still need tissue close at all times, but my head is clearing and the beauty of the past couple days makes me wake sans-desperation. Excited even…
On top of a trip to the playground with Aunts, Uncles and cousins on Saturday, we took full advantage of the temperature and sun yesterday, too.
The strawberries are admitting it’s spring-ish.
Naomi hoed and planted carrots in her garden bed.
Does your husband make Amish Bread? yum… (he substituted succanat for sugar and olive oil for vegetable oil–so proud. he’s always been a strict recipe follower, I think i’ve had some influence)
We laid a small brick walkway in a mucky spot.
And we retreated, exhausted by fun. Now I’m off to address the cleanliness of INSIDE the house.
We dream a lot about our future, but yesterday was suited more towards this quote and we were encouraged to be content where we are until our time comes to move along:
“I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.” -Albert Einstien
And while I’m here: What day is a command to move on?
8 Comments
Good luck with cutting down on using plastic! I'm getting ready to start my first veggie/herb garden this month and will chronicle it on my blog. Any advice you could have would always be appreciated 🙂
Good post. I can do anything when the sun shines— except, perhaps, remember to bring my reusable bags with me on every trip. If you come up with a solution for storing in the freezer (ours is small) w/o plastic, lemme know. It creeps me out to defrost a bag of soup in the microwave.
Isn't it amazing how much plastic waste there is out there! And just being aware of it is a great start for trying to cut back! Good for you!
Feel free to stop by any time this month and let us know how it is going! http://1smallchangeblog.blogspot.com/
I have been freezing in reusable tupperware type thingys. I still have over 1 year old pumpkin puree in there in some, and it seems fine. I don't know if they're actually approved for freezer-ing, but I use them anyway. I've only had a few things ever have any ice buildup, and nothing with bad freezer burn flavor on it.
Food Snob-i'll keep my eyes on your progress! Looks like you've got a great start!
Melissa, loving the sun, I've been most productive!
HMM-I will, thanks for all the inspiration!
anelle-i use those some too, & they are much easier to re-use, still don't LOVE using it…there's got to be a better way!
This is a great post. I just had one of the ‘Doh!’ moments and ran back to correct my own site before publishing my comment. You see my own comment form did not match what I’m about to advice. I get less comment than you, so never noticed any problem. I’ve changed it now anyway so here goes.
study abroad
We have been using freezable glass pyrex for the past few years, and it has really helped us cut down on the plastic bag storage issues. It is more space that it takes up, and inevitably you will still need plastic bags to freeze a large part of your garden, but it does still cut down significantly
Hey! I hope your March change is going great so far!
Make sure to stop by the One Small Change blog to enter into our latest giveaway and see what the community is up to!
http://1smallchangeblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/giveaway-reusable-produce-bags.html
We also started a face book fan page which can be accessed from the blog! 🙂
Thanks!
Suzy
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