Coming up tomorrow night is our second giveaway, and it's a BIG one. I am becoming a huge, huge fan of Etsy as a means of connecting with people and avoiding the world of mass production.
My focus on trash the last couple of months has been transformative. I tried a number of your suggestions in the comments of our first giveaway. I'm the proud owner of portable chopsticks, I'm reusing glass jars like crazy, and I even tried making blocks for Mr. Noah out of cartons.
We're down to one small shopping bag of trash a week. We still have a lot of paper recycling, but our plastic and metal has been markedly reduced. These are the foods whose packaging fills our trash and recycling:
Tortillas
Cheese
Meat
Frozen vegetables and fruits-- I still buy large bags of frozen berries and vegetables, mainly because it really helps reduce my trips to the grocery store and stretches out our fresh vegetables. Give me time...
Nuts-- the bulk bins at our coop are still very expensive.
Milk cartons (yup, they’re lined with plastic)
My honey containers are still usually plastic. An easy fix, I know.
Can you relate? Do you have a food that is your achilles' heel when it comes to packaging? Reading the list, I reckon honey is probably the item where we can make the first change.
4 comments:
Plastic and glass bottles and cans. From cleaning products (detergent), milk, tuna, peanut butter, and especially from beverages (milk, juice, alcohol).
For some reason, the thick plastic containers (like from shampoo or drain-cleaning gel) bother me the most.
-Tiff
Have you ever tried boiling water with vinegar and baking soda for clearing drains? I wrote about it in 2008, but I haven't had to clean my drain for a while... I probably should. http://www.concretegardener.com/2008/02/how-to-clear-clogged-drain-without.html
I tried it once for a little clog and it worked. For a big clog, unfortunately, not so much. And vinegar, unfortunately, often comes in plastic jugs as well...though it's probably better than pouring those drain-cleaning chemicals into the drain.
Indeed. I fear that our philosophy may be that we stay just long enough to clog up the drains really badly for the next person... We get very huge vinegar bottles, which last quite a while-- maybe 4 months? For cleaning pretty much everything. Perhaps because we don't clean enough...
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