I am so embarrassed. (PLASTIC FAIL)

Well, as you see from Jim's post below, we collected all our plastic "trash" for one week. And OH MY GOD I must use more plastic than anyone on the planet, I swear. Here I am patting myself on the (tattooed) back for bein' all green and sassy, and we must have accumulated 60 pounds of plastic. Okay, not that much, but a lot. We were going to catalogue it, but yeah, that was overwhelming. Here's what I can decipher from the photo:

2 (maybe more) plastic trays from Trader Joe's vegetables
plastic wrap from same
empty mustard bottle
half-dozen or so NyQuil blister packs
2 or 3 Band-Aids (I did not add those to the pile because it's gross to save Band-Aids)
10 ramen noodle packages (in my defense, I was sick last weekend and that's all I wanted)
huge Costco toilet paper wrapper (I think I could wrap my car with it)
bubble-wrap envelope (I couldn't very well tell my Etsy seller not to ship my stuff in plastic)
empty bottle of dog treats
2 clamshell containers (one from Jim's lunch and one that held cherry tomatoes)

And a bunch of other crap that I am embarrassed to have bought. Jim's right that most of it is recyclable, but the plastic recycling process ain't exactly all that energy-efficient. At any rate, my ramen noodle craving disappeared with my cold. I think our biggest culprit is food, and it would be easy to reduce our plastic there. Frequently we go to Trader Joe's first because we know what they have, and then we go to My Organic Market (the amazing MOM's) for everything else. I think we'll start relying on the MOM's more—sometimes their produce is a little pricier, but it's all organic, mostly local, and it sure as hell isn't pre-packaged.

let's help the polar bears...

The tone of this blog is going to change. If you know me then you know I've been interested in ecology and the environment for a long time (I should scan my Earth Day poster I made in 5th or 6th grade art class). If you know Shannon then you know she is also inspired to help better the environment. We are frequent readers of a number of green or eco-blogs and we need to start putting out money (or actions/activities) where are minds are. Today marks the beginning of that spirit. We are participating in an experiment/challenge posed by Beth from Fake Plastic Fish . She challenged readers to collect their plastic trash for one week to see what it amounted to. We'll be taking part in her process, but I wanted to show readers of my blog (if there are any) what our one week of plastic trash looked like.

Here it is:







Now, according to our county's department of waste management, most of this stuff is recyclable. However, all this plastic stuff in one week is eye opening to say the least. Clearly, we have a lot to do in order to reduce our consumption. Shannon and I have made a number of changes in our spending/purchasing due to things we've read and learned. It's a work in progress.