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| I do not need to go into a plastic bag, thank you very much! |
I mean there was the recent time I went to the store with all kinds of reusable bags and containers. At the check out counter, the cashier was busy putting stuff in my own bags I had bought and calculating my bulk purchases. But I must have gotten distracted (probably by having to pay with my new 'chip' credit card which I am still getting used to). I wheeled the bought groceries out to parking lot and started to put them into the trunk of the van only to discover the cashier had put a 4 pack of cream soda (which clearly had a carrying handle in its cardboard carrier) and a couple of my extra cloth bags into a plastic bag! In fact because the 4 bottles of cream soda were heavy, he had DOUBLE BAGGED! So something that didn't need a plastic bag to begin with (the cream soda) plus two cloth bags, which you would think would have clued him into the fact that I was trying to be environmentally responsible, and I wound up with not one but two plastic bags.
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| My daughter was not smiling like this as she attempted to get her braces on and off, I can assure you! |
Then my daughter who is getting her teeth straightened just started using Invisalign. She really has to because she has a bad allergy to nickel which can found in surgical stainless steel. I am glad they invented Invisalign for her sake, but we've got lots of plastic going on there! And will for the next two years!
Right now her teeth hurt a lot. They told her to eat soft foods only, for at least the first couple of days. She didn't take them seriously enough and decided to eat some crusty french bread, which resulted in one of the newly glued on ceramic hooks coming off her tooth. So now we have another orthodontist appointment to get that fixed.
I am trying to think of soft foods for her to eat. She does like smoothies but berries are always either frozen in plastic bags or in plastic containers in the produce section. I was wondering if I could use strawberry preserves instead? Why not? So we are having smoothies for breakfast today. I got her a can of chicken noodle soup for lunch. That's as far as I've gotten.
I've got so much going on right now in the food/cooking department, it is a bit overwhelming. First I've got both vegetarians and meat eaters to feed. Then I've got the goal to avoid plastic and now I've got a soft food requirement.
Makes me want to tear my hair out!
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And then there was the case of the diminishing supply of toilet paper. See, at the beginning of Lent I had bought a bunch of single rolls that were wrapped individually in recyclable paper, which was great, but then we starting to get dangerously low so I went hunting in the stores I thought had sold them, but to no avail. I went to all my usual haunts and nope, only toilet paper wrapped in plastic.
I wound up buying a big bulk package of Seventh Generation. Hopefully that company really is trying to do things and isn't just using an environmentalism-public relations campaign to sell their products. I hope so. They seem like good guys. I do get so chagrinned when I enter a supposedly environmentally-friendly, organic store to see everything encased in plastic and more plastic. I know they try to do more with recycled stuff, but why even go there unless it is absolutely necessary? I think for most of the organic world, dealing with plastic is still an afterthought.
Scott Toilet Paper has the individual rolls wrapped in paper and should be everywhere.
ReplyDeleteBuy berries at the supermarket and freeze them. Oh, wait, I usually do that in plastic freezer bags, to prevent freezer burn. Yikes.
I think you can get berries in bulk at farmers' markets, but all the ones I've seen at grocery stores come in plastic containers in the actual produce department. Canning jars make good freezer substitutes for plastic bags.
DeleteIf you go to the Local Store in FC they reuse the berry containers. Of course, it's not berry season ... Fruits and vegetables are the hardest, because I guess I am spoiled but I refuse to go for months living on roots and nuts, no broccoli etc. But it's all plastic bags. I thought of canned (I know, yuck, but it's better than nothing) but now they line cans with plastic, if I am not mistaken. It's all such an outrage. I wrote to the yogurt companies a few years back, and the better ones wrote back, saying that the environmental cost of shipping glass or other containers (because of weight) outweighed to them the use of plastic, maybe they are right? It really is enough to make you tear your hair out, and I don't even have to feed kids. (And I remember how much braces hurt! You're a good mom being sensitive, my mother used to light a cigarette and say "stop that infernal whining" - the good ole days, lol.)
ReplyDeleteTo my mind, all the junkie yogurt out there that really is so bad for us, it is not worth the plastic that WILL NEVER GO AWAY! (I say this as a born again plastic hater - annoying in her single track nagging. LOL) I think with yogurt you can buy from local distributors that ship in glass. It is pricier so probably less yogurt consumption would result. Many people make their own yogurt now. I find it very intimidating.... As for fresh veggies, I am lucky because my CSA stayed open all winter! They grow stuff in greenhouses and they have stuff that can last awhile like butternut squash and sweet potatoes, onions, turnips, some carrots. We've been eating these all winter. At the stores I'm frequenting (Fresh Market and Whole Foods) I'm finding I can buy lettuce, carrots, celery (sometimes), peppers, mushrooms, plastic free. For fruit I buy bananas, apples, oranges, kiwi, mango (I know a lot of them are coming from far away but I am of two minds - I like local, but I also think, hey humans have been trading for thousands of years - Silk road, anyone??) I just discovered dried cherries and berries at WF bulk, so I've been using them instead of fresh or frozen. However, they don't blend up well in the blender for smoothies. My 15 yo is very melodramatic but I can tell when it really hurts. She gets pale and wan looking. And it really hurts!
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