Show Your Plastic Challenge - July Week 3 Update

WEEK 3 SHOW YOUR PLASTIC CHALLENGE

   TOTAL –  44 PIECES, 14.1 OZ

Plastic Free July - Week 3

Okay, so I thought that I was making some progress this week. My collection bag wasn’t overflowing on Friday and I was starting to feel some accomplishment. Then all at once – POOF! – it filled up and was spilling out. We made some accomplishments this week by choosing to be more mindful grocery shoppers. While we didn’t refuse all plastic free items yet, we did refuse to buy some of the gluten free grocery items that have been our regular purchases. We did limit our plastic purchases this week.

Without further ado, here are our pictures for this week…   

        Non-Recyclables  

        

Recyclables

                                                                              

Before I talk about our conclusions and goals for this week (i.e. problems) let’s talk about the progress that we were able to make this week (i.e. success). Accentuate the positive first, right?

PLASTIC FREE PROGRESS:

• Made 29 choices on Catalogchoice.org to refuse catalogs and choose to shop online if needed. Saved 1 tree, 329 lbs greenhouse gases, 117 lbs solid waste, and 789 gallons of water. WOW!
• Plastic Free Mindful Grocery Shopping Trip
• Researched new sources for recycling our waste (or even better do without them): aseptic milk containers, Tom’s of Maine toothpaste tubes, Plastic Bottle Caps
• Dropped of all #5 Plastic Containers at Whole Foods for Gimme 5 Preserve Recycling Program

SUMMARY:

Week 1 Totals – 52 items, 13 oz

Week 2 Totals – 59 items, 18 oz

Week 3 Totals – 44 items, 13.1 oz

At this rate our family will produce over 48 pounds of plastic garbage this year. Fourty-eight pounds of non-biodegradable refuse that will be on our planet FOREVER….

GOALS:

•  Complete a Grocery Substitution Worksheet from Beth Terry’s book Plastic Free – How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too with ideas for plastic free substitutes of my top 20 grocery items. From the pictures you can obviously see that the majority of our plastic waste is from food.
• Implement one or two plastic free changes from the Grocery Substitution Worksheet. I’m leaning toward bread and cereal this week.
• Focus on refusing convenience items. This week I slipped up several times. These were things that I forgot or was too embarrassed or just flat out too lazy to refuse. They shouldn’t have happened.

We must remind ourselves that it’s not possible to change everything at once. 

Inch by Inch = Cinch. Mile by Mile = Trial.