Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Plastic Challenge -Greg Reed



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



2 comments:

  1. 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!

    - James Herman

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  2. " 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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