Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Earth Day 6- what I have and what I learned

Yesterday wasn't so bad but I did add something to my garbage that I didn't expect to. While in the grocery store a few weeks ago, I picked up a bag of organic frozen peas from Whole Foods. I was feeling all green and healthy because they were organic and frozen, and then I dumped the bag of peas into the rice cooker last night. I looked at the bag, wondering if it was recycleable or not. It wasn't. It did say that to make the bag is used 25% less plastic which I guess is good, but why not put something like this in a cardboard carton? Why even use plastic at all? I think our whole society is using plastic way too much! I mean its used in everything, and I honestly don't think it needs to be. Maybe the food packagers are just lazy? or they have an overload of oil lying around to turn into plastic? Either way, I'm so done with buying plastic. Now I have this pea plastic bag and it doesn't have a reuseable ziplock, so I'm trying to think of what to use it for. I usually use tupperwear, yup thats plastic too! I'm thinking I'll purchase some glass tupperwear soon though but I don't want to throw out the plastic tupperwear as that would be a waste, so we'll just have to keep both. On second thought maybe I'll just keep using the darn plastic tupperwear...what do you think? Part of me wants to get rid of everything plastic and start new with glass, but that would not be very green so I'm sort of stuck with it I guess. (hence the rant above lol) So back to my original thinking...I could keep the pea plastic bag for future use when I or Martin bring a pb & J sandwich into work for lunch or something like that. Its funny I have about 5 baggies now that are not recycleable that I can use to pack sandwiches, travel toiletries, or to pack another kind of snack, maybe for a hiking trip.

Because I can reuse my pea bag (thanks for listening to me work that out), I still have today what I had yesterday in my garbage bag. Thank God, because I'd rather it not get any heavier.

I learned that I seriously need to start baking bread (thanks for that suggestion Shannon!)  I just have to figure out a few hours during the week when I can set aside to do that. I'm thinking today I can go and pick up ingredients and then I will can start working on it today or tomorrow.

I learned that even though Seventh Generation is a great green company, their toilet paper plastic wrapping is not recycleable here in NYC, its plastic is a #4, so I will have to take this plastic with me to NJ with my lids to recycle. So I have all the garbage from yesterday, plus 4 lids which are not going up because I bought a glass thermus cup, and this plastic wrap from the toilet paper.  Again, I don't understand why they can just be wrapped in recycled paper like single toilet papers are.

I found this great website called How Can I Recycle This? which gives you just about every way to recycle different items such as pen caps.

I want to buy plastic degradeable garbage bags but with all the saving we are doing with throwing stuff away, I don't know that we'll need garbage bags for awhile. ironic right? I'd rather use the plastic ones we have and then start fresh with the degradeable ones, so that just might be awhile.

Thanks for stopping by! I'd love to hear any suggestions you have to Recycle and Reuse!
-Nikki

7 comments:

  1. All the plastic is one reasomn I don't buy from trader joes. everything there is wrapped in plastic, which actually makes the veggies mold faster.

    I've been wanting to make my own bread, just haven't found an easy recipt to try. Let me know how yours comes out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cool, I need to check out that website.
    The other day I had a drink from a plastic cup at the convenience store and I swore I could taste the plastic. Can't be good!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good points. I am trying to get rid of the plastic...I will keep my plastic reusable containers for now...but am trying to switch to glass. I am off to check out that web site!

    I really want to make my own bread too!

    Thanks for stopping by for SITS Day (last week)! I already follow here too...just wish there were more hours in a day to visit everyone all the time!

    Holly
    504 Main

    ReplyDelete
  4. Good job! Oh, and the baking bread? My friend does that and loves it. I think I may start as well. Much better taste as well!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for the great website! I had one of those Fuze drinks today and I had no idea whether I could recycle it or not so I need to look it up!

    ReplyDelete
  6. It makes you wonder if it costs more to package with cardboard? It's crazy all the things that are better for us and the environment costs more.

    My daughters have tote bags that are made out of plastic things that at one time were a bag of chips, a grocery bag etc. They are really cute.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for stopping by and dropping some comment love!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...