Saturday, December 20, 2008

Week 4 Plastic Waste


This is a few days late...

- Plastic window from a CFL mini bulb box.
- labels from a green pepper and some oranges.
- bag from some shredded cheddar cheese
- thread spool and package for D-Rings (sewing notions)
- plastic topped party toothpick
- Reese's Peanut Butter Cups wrapper

CFL Bulbs: the larger bulbs come in a box with no plastic window, why not the small ones? I could probably do a better job of looking for produce without plastic stickers. The next cheddar I buy will be in a block, wrapped in paper or placed in a container brought from home. I haven't tried this yet with the cheese counter guys, so wish me luck. The sewing notions are from a home improvement project-- I made two big belts to tame a futon mattress that really, really didn't want to fold for couch duty. In the future I can go to notion stores in the Garment District and purchase notions from bins, counted out into a small paper bag. But for thread I'm stuck with plastic. They used to come on wooden spools, but not anymore.

I've been pretty lucky with holiday parties so far, getting away with putting nibbles on a paper napkin. However the Swedish meatballs were my downfall. I used that plastic topped toothpick with intent. As for the Reese's wrapper-- I squinted and told myself it looked like paper but knew better.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Juli,

Container use is the ideal way to remove plastic packaging waste from purchases. I have been using them for months and explain their use to staff etc. Staff are more than happy to cater for consumer choices.
One strange thing is the "necessity of plastic packaging for food" mantra repeated parrot fashion by certain workers. I simply state that a non-plastic-waste lifestyle easily manages no wasted food.

Anonymous said...

Good luck with the cheese. I find you have to pick your delis carefully. Good ones subtract the weight of your container and then weigh the cheese right in it. Bad ones put a little piece of plastic on the scale before weighing even after you've explained that you don't want any plastic or waste. "Oh that's ok," they say "I can just throw it in the garbage for you". . . .

And I agree, those plastic ended toothpicks are everywhere!