Show Your Plastic Challenge - Plastic Free July Week 1

TOTAL - 13 ounces, 52 pieces

The moment of truth is not too pretty.

July Week 1 - 13 oz, 52 pieces

Ok, so I know that our family cannot be entirely plastic free, but I thought we had made more progress in our journey beginning 18 months ago.  Since the last trimester of my pregnancy began I knew that we slid backwards. My husband took over alot of the food preparation and he is not as passionate about limiting plastic consumption as I am. While he is supportive, this my gig for the family. He is the kind contributor of the polystyrene cup, lid and straw seen in the picture this week. Yes, I still love you sweetheart!

I have spent the week having a pep talk with my children reinvigorating their plastic free vision. They seem on board at this point. Time will tell. As I began this week's tally my daughter excitedly paticipated while "Mama played with the trash." She loves this part! The tally makes me both excited and disgusted. I can't imagine how much plastic the average household puts on the curb each week. We don't even use a municipal garbage service. Our single bag every 2-4 weeks isn't worth it.

Should I be dissappointed in our results for this week? Some would say yes, some no. Perhaps a review of some of the changes made since the journey began will be encouraging and keep me from giving up. Each week I will share one or more changes we have successfully implemented. Perhaps that will give me impatus to continue changing.

One of the first changes we (husband and I) made was changing to a metal razor with stainless blades. My husband has been using a razor purchased at a local antique/second hand shop. He found  stainless steel blades from Astra on Amazon. They are manufactured in Russia. I was so impressed and surprised to see that each blade is packaged without any plastic. They are wrapped in tiny envelopes of wax paper and another layer of paper. Each plastic free blade cost only $0.09.

PLASTIC FREE PROGRESS:

We are still using our first shipment of blades purchased in January 2013. A total of under $20.00 US was spent on this plastic free purchase. I have gifted several similar razors to friends and family since to inspire living without this single use disposable. This is one single use disposable that we can definitely live without.

GOALS:

This week I want to lessen the amount of convenience foods that we have reverted back to using as of late. We live 100 miles from the grocery store that we purchase most of our gluten free, allergen freindly foods from. I do have a stockpile of products on hand that will undoubtedly be consumed and will be included in the posts to come. I will lessen the new purchases going forward. That is my goal.

Remember small steps add up to BIG CHANGES.