Greg Reed
During the plastic challenge I found that I throw away a lot more
plastics than I thought. My plastic
challenge consisted of two normal days of collecting disposable plastics from myself
and housemate. I have listed the items
below and labeled them in the first picture.
Disposable Plastics:
1. Simply Orange Juice Jug
2. Halls Cough Drops Bag
3. Plastic Fork and Knife
4. Juice Carton Stopper
5. Plastic Grocery Bags 8X
6. Baby Carrots Bag
7. Two Pack Orange Juice Wrapper
8. Ham Bag
9. Shredded Cheese Bag
10. String Cheese Wrappers 8X
11. Ziploc bag with Cookie
During these two days the items kept piling up and it seemed like I tended
to finish up many of the food items that were in plastic wrap during these two
days. I went grocery shopping one of the
days and I used eight plastic bags to transport my items home. Usually I prefer paper bags, but once in a
while I use plastic because I re-use the plastic bags as trash bags around my
home. So overall they still end up in
the trash. One major plastic item I had
many of was string cheese wrappers. I
feel silly now, because a block of cheese is a much better solution and slicing
cheese. It seems to me individual
plastic wrappers make life easy and allow people to become lazy. Once the two days were over, I was determined
to find better alternatives.
Replace with Re-useable items:
1. Re-fill-able glass container
2. Cough Syrup one bottle or suck it up and don’t use cough drops
3. Metal Fork and Knife, plan ahead
4. Paper seal on jug
5. Paper bags or re-usable cloth bags
6. Get carrots directly from garden with container
7. Get OJ 2 for 1 deal that is not packaged together
8. Get ham that comes in container
9. Cheese block and shred at home
10. Big chunk of cheese and slice for snack
11. Plastic container
The re-useable items are numbered corresponding to which item they are
replacing above. It is difficult to find
a solution to milk and juice plastic jugs besides if a store re-filled glass
jars, or you get your OJ or milk refilled right from a farm. Planning ahead can help you cut down on
plastic use, for example I was caught unprepared and had to use a plastic fork and
knife at a potluck dinner instead of bringing my own metal utensils. One of the solutions for fruit and vegetable disposable
plastic wrap would be to get the veggies right from the garden with a container. There are many opportunities to find locally
grown fruit and vegetables at farmers markets or community gardens. Another common theme I found is I like to eat
a lot of cheese in all forms. Shredding
or slicing one cheese block will cut down on many plastic bags cheese normally
comes in.
The second picture shows some solutions I have implemented in my daily
life. The items here are a large re-useable
juice container for lemonade, cloth grocery bags, metal water bottle, Pyrex
glass container, re-useable ham and sandwich plastic containers, metal
fork/knife, and the last item that appears dark is a re-useable 6-pack
connector device. Instead of having the
normal plastic 6-pack rings that sometimes end up around bird’s necks, a micro-brewery
in Marquette uses hard plastic connector devices you can return to the brewery
for re-use on future 6-packs. I think
this is a really good idea and should be implemented to all 6-pack cans.
-Greg Reed
I agree, I'm a huge fan of string cheese. I like the solution of buying a huge chunk of cheese, but that still doesn't solve the portability of string cheese. Maybe some sort of container could be made to hold individual slices of cheese from the big chunks!
ReplyDelete- James Herman
" Instead of having the normal plastic 6-pack rings that sometimes end up around bird’s necks, a micro-brewery in Marquette uses hard plastic connector devices you can return to the brewery for re-use on future 6-packs. I think this is a really good idea and should be implemented to all 6-pack cans." I had no idea!
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