a find from Fake Plastic Fish

Firstly, if any of you are reading me regularly, I hope you are also reading Beth Terry at Fake Plastic Fish. She posts much more regularly than I do, and she has so many wonderful things to say.

In her last post, she had this link. Which I think looks like it's going to be an awful lot of fun. So I wanted to make sure I shared it with all of you.

mining for plastic

I rewatched Addicted to Plastic the other day, and a few of the recyclers featured had a really interesting view on plastics and garbage dumps.

They had both developed technologies that would turn any kind of plastic into one type of usable material. And both of these guys talked quite matter-of-factly about mining plastic from garbage dumps in the future.

The first thing that struck me about this is the scary beauty of capitalism. When recycling plastics becomes sufficiently profitable, I expect it will be amazing how quickly things move, technology develops, and garbage starts disappearing. Literally, dumps will disappear. There will be no such thing as an unrecyclable plastic. Of this I am absolutely certain.

The other striking thing about this proposed cycle is the no guilt aspect. "Oh, it's ok if we have a disposable culture now, because we'll just go clean it up later when we run out of what we need to make it and we'll just make it again! No harm done."

I assume I don't have to point out who the losers are in this scenario.

But I digress. What these segments really did was make me curious about the feasibility of this, and whether or not it's already happening. And it appears it is! I've only done a quick search, but I've found a few articles about garbage mining, one about the likely prospect of dumps in the UK from the 80s being opened up and mined for their plastics sometime in the next 20 years or so, another from back in '93 about some towns that were already mining their dumps in Pennsylvania, and this one from San Francisco which also mentions that SF already diverts 70% of their waste to either recycling or composting. This seems like a huge number to me and makes me really curious about Vancouver.... so that is my next project. What exactly does Vancouver do with its waste? And where does the recycling go they collect in the Blue Boxes? And how am I going to find this out?

Hummous

I found a store that will fill my container with hummous today. That made me happy.

recyclable milk bottle lids

Excitement abounds! I have just discovered that the milk bottle lids I've been collecting are recyclable! I don't know why I thought they weren't, but I did. But they are! #4 plastic, 100% accepted by the blue box recycling program. yay!

London Drugs as source of plastic-free living goods? Who knew!

I am such a sucker for sales.

I just went for a visit to London Drugs because I heard they had a sale on Wasa crackers, which have lately become more or less my bread replacement since the (amazing) plastic-free bread I've been enjoying is both too far away and too expensive to enjoy on as regular a basis as I might like. At half the price I usually buy them for, and given the rate I've been going through them lately, it seemed stocking up on the Wasas was a good idea.

Now, I can't wander into a store, particularly a store like London Drugs, without wandering down the aisles and admiring what's what.

Imagine my surprise, and indeed delight, to discover that today's little wander uncovered all manner of plastic-free living delights!

First, the chocolate.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm a sucker for a good snack craving. Usually it's something salty, which I've so far been satisfying with popcorn and occasionally cheese (yes, still buying the plastic-wrapped variety). But every now and then it's for something sweet, and even something chocolate. I've been pretty distrustful of most chocolate bar-wrappers, even the foil ones can be deceptive, but I hadn't given much thought to it. I generally feel it's best to ignore such cravings and if living plastic free gives me another excuse to do so, mores the better! But today in London Drugs I was reminded of a perfectly good plastic-free chocolate alternative:

Glosettes!

Now, ok, I know, they aren't the Belgian Milk Chocolate, or the Swiss Dark, but hey, they come in a cardboard box. What could be more plastic-free than that?

Next up, thermos mugs.

After the styrafoam cup use referred to in my last post, I determined to do better. And indeed i did. The next time I went to that particular outdoor Olympic venue I came with a great little thermos mug. Unfortunately, it wasn't mine. See, I've never had a travel cup that I really liked. I find them mostly rather oddly shaped, or still containing plastic, or SOMETHING. Well, my roommate has this awesome little thermos mug which she apparently got at mec, and I've been planning on getting myself one soon. (I couldn't actually find what she has on their website, but it was something like this. Point is, it was compact, lightweight, and fit into my purse).

So today I wandered into the 'food containers' aisle at London Drugs, and what did I find?? Thermos mugs! ON SALE!

Well, ok, not quite thermos mugs, actually these dudes are intended for food storage. But they were regular 21.99 on for 9.99 so (sucker for sales, right?) I bought two. Plus another one a different size.

The best part? They were all completely packaging free.

Now, I suppose they probably originally came individually wrapped and London Drugs just unwrapped them to display them more attractively and take up less space... but I like to imagine perhaps they were plastic-free in the first place.

And then, right below the thermos mugs, MC2 by Innate, a Vancouver company that I feel I really should have known about by now. (Of course, these local company, plastic-free alternatives were displayed on the bottom shelf, well below the Glad and Tupperware options). Anyway, they produce a stainless steel with silione lid food container that will, I believe, also fit into my purse. Also on sale. I also bought two. So now I have something other than a plastic container to bring with me if ever I need to bring home leftovers or request take out in my own container. And something other than plastic in which to store my own home-cooked leftovers! In fact, between the five (five? Did I really need to buy five?) containers I purchased today (that was expensieve trip to buy crackers), I'm not even sure I'll need to use the plastic containers we have in the house anymore at all. And that really is an exciting idea.

In all this day was exciting because I am essentially a lazy person, and going out of my way to seek plastic free options is not always something I do. So when I find the plastic-free options withOUT going of my way, I feel relieved. And happy. And like I need to share these discoveries with the world!

Also, Innate is located pretty much down the street. Ok, a ways down the street. But still, I'm thinking of going for a walk to go check them out.

Oh happy, plastic-free day.

And yes, I did also buy the crackers. Six packages of them, in fact.

February plastic tally

I've decided to do what all the other plastic bloggers do: keep a plastic tally.

So I've tried to keep all the plastic from the last month that I've used and would normally throw out. Now, much like the rest of this plastic challenge, I've been much less stringnet about this than some of those other plastic bloggers, and I'm sure I will have missed a few things. I am still hopeful that this process might bring some items to my attention that I can work on removing from use. So, here goes.

The tally:

- Ten plastic window envelopes
- One styrafoam cup (the most evil of the plastics in losingplasticland, it would appear), used when my incessant coughing required a warm drink while at an olympic event
- Five plastic milk bottle lids. It's funny, I don't usually drink this much milk, but I've been making a lot of yogurt. So those five lids are replacing at least four yogurt containers. Much less volume of plastic waste, but the yogurt containers are recyclable. I wonder what that means in the overall plastic tally
-Three random pieces of plastic packaging. I'm not completely sure where each of these came from. One lost like the shape of a cd, which may have been something I just opened from Christmas, one is from that metronome I posted about, and one is, I think, from the calender I ordered from fujifilm, but I'm not sure.
- One plastic razor. Left over from a few months ago, just cleaning out cupboards and got rid of it
- One travel toothbrush. Used for two months straight in Panama and Colombia. This little baby served me well, but it is time for retirement
- Two contact lense containers. The fact that there are only two in this bag suggests to me that it is time to replace the contacts I've been wearing. They are only intended for two week at a time use!
- One plastic garbage bag and tape. These had been used to pack some boxes I had in storage which I finally unpacked this month. The garbage bag ended up pretty ripped, so I don't think I can reuse it.

All in all, not too bad I feel. I'm most astonished at the envelopes. I've never realized how many plastic-window envelopes I receive, because I usually just toss them in the recycling without thinking about it. Looking this pile, though, has made me reconsider if I really need to receive all of this mail. I have since gone paperless on my bank statement, and will be cancelling my subscription on one other regular sender. I'm still considering my options on some other bills, but I think that's a good start.

I feel certain I must have used more plastic than this.

Oh yes, I just remembered. There was a sushi container that should have been added to this pile. And a beer cup, again from the Olympics.

And probably more. I will try to be more vigilant in collection for next month.