New Ideas to Cut Down on Plastic

I learned about this site from Ideal Bite. Ideally we don't want to use a Dry Cleaner at all, because the chemicals used in the process of dry cleaning are really bad for us and the environment. Not to mention the waste involved! Look at all the plastic they use to wrap those clothes after "cleaning" them!

I have a few clothes that need to be dry-cleaned and they have been sitting around my house not being worn for close to 2 years because I just couldn't bring myself to go to the dry cleaners anymore. Well, good thing I didn't get rid of them because I found a Dry Cleaners locally that cleans clothes using liquid carbon dioxide. It claims to be non-toxic, non-hazardous, non-carcinogenic and has no chemical smell!

I can't wait to try it. If you live in the San Diego area you can find one closest to you at:
Hangers Cleaners.

Then you can take your Clothesnik bag with you and help cut down on plastic waste too!

Clean Your Beach!

Not all of us have the good fortune to live close to the ocean, but if you do...if you grew up near one like I did... then you know that special feeling the ocean gives you. It's a feeling that's hard to explain, but it is uplifting, healing and inspirational all at once.

When I read about the Plastic Soup, it broke my heart to think that we have destroyed something so beautiful all for the sake of convenience!

I run at the beach 3 times a week and see a lot of plastic waste and trash below the high tide mark, which means that junk will be in the water within a few hours time.

Whenever I see trash I try to pick it up, in fact I'm kind of obsessive about it, but I see so many people that just step right over it and go merrily on their way. If you want to enjoy the beauty of something, wouldn't you want to help take care of it too? It just takes a few minutes to pick up a piece of trash and deposit it in a trash can.

Our city has an organization called ILACSD (I love a clean San Diego) that puts on several beach clean ups per year and I highly recommend getting involved with something like that. A lot of the plastic that ends up in the ocean could have been kept out if it had just been picked up off the beach.

It's great to have occasional beach clean ups, but what happens to all the trash that ends up on the beach the other 363 days of the year? Wouldn't it be great if we could have daily beach clean ups?

Well I just looked on the ILACSD website and they have an adopt-a-beach program which is exactly what I was thinking of! Check it out at: http://www.ilacsd.org/v_beach.php There are currently over 5000 volunteers.

I think when I retire I am going to volunteer at ILACSD or something like it. It is so gratifying to know that you are doing something to help our planet.

I recommend it to everyone. We should all be doing something, no matter how insignificant. If I pick up 10 pieces of trash a day (which I do plus some) 3 days a week, 50 weeks a year, that's 1500 pieces of trash. Muliply that by even just 5000 people and you're talking 7,500,000 piece of trash we would keep from washing into the ocean every year!

You Can Help!

Each year Californians use 19 billion plastic bags. Those bags end up in landfills or in the ocean.
Trash in landfills is a major contributor to greenhouse gases that cause global warming. And plastic bags in the ocean are harmful to marine life - hundreds of thousands of marine mammals die each year from ingesting plastic bags.
Plastics are also harmful to human life because they never fully break down in the environment and end up as toxins that threaten human health.
Help reduce the use of plastic bags in California. Email your state senator to support the Plastic Bag Litter Reduction Act (AB 2058).
http://action.edf.org/campaign/CA_plasticbags

Musings on Trash and Consumerism

We live in a fast food society. How have we gotten this way? We live out of our cars. We rush from one place to another. We eat on the go. Would we be able to live this way if plastic had not been invented? Would plastic have been invented if we did not live this way?

Do we really need to be eating on the go? Look at America's obesity rates. I think it would not hurt any of us to wait until we get home to eat. A few hunger pains are not going to hurt us and look at all of the plastic we would not be using!

I have recently gone vegan. I basically eat fruits and vegetables now and the occasional whole wheat bun and vegan protein source (tofu, gardenburgers, etc). I am amazed at how much my plastic usage has decreased. If it weren't for my Panikin/Peet's adiction I would probably not need plastic at all. My previously paltry amount of trash is now next to nothing. If I composted, it would be even less. I live in a condo, but I am starting to think that I could and should compost. Even my recycle bin is not as full as it used to be. Fruits and vegetables just don't come with a lot of wrappings and I don't feel the need to put them all in plastic bags at the grocery store.

I think if we didn't have the convenience of putting our trash out on the street and having it picked up and taken away by a big truck, we might think twice about what we consume and what we throw away. Next week when you take your trash out, imagine where you would put it all if you were responsible for disposing of it yourself. Now imagine your trash times 105,000,000. That's how many households there are just in the United States. Start living as if you DID have to dispose of all of your trash yourself and see how it affects your choices.

Compostable Plastic Alternatives

Check out this website. For those of you that love the convenience of plastic bags, you can now get guilt-free plastice bags at BioBag!

Action: Encourage your favorite take out spots to switch to 100% compostable plastic!

Monsoon Vermont

OMG! Maybe we just need to take recycling to the next level like this group has. Go to this website! http://www.monsoonvt.com/

Check out all of the great products they are making out of recycled plastic. Not only is this group helping the environment, but they are helping give work to the poor and needy and elevating the quality of life for the people of Indonesia.

Buy something from this group and you will be racking up some serious karma points!

Recycling is Not the Answer!

I just posted a new link to a great website that I got from a friends facebook profile. It has tons of information about the evil's of plastic and about alternatives to plastic. Check it out! http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/plastic.htm

Here is a note I got off one of the articles:

"mindfully.org note:

We feel that participating in curbside recycling is absolutely required, however, one should be aware of the fact that plastic is not truly recycled. It's only used a few more times, if at all, before being discarded, possibly by being shipped to countries that are not as developed as the US that are so desperate for cash that they will take our garbage. The real solution to the plastic problem is to stop using it whenever possible. It's toxic and unhealthy for all living things and never goes away. "

So true!

Plastic Squeezable Bottles

I am noticing plastic everywhere now. It's hard to get away from it. All of our lotions, sunscreens, shampoos, shower gels, honey, water, etc. come in plastic bottles. Have you tried to squeeze honey or shampoo out of a glass bottle? What did we ever do before plastic? I think we used bar soap for everything, including washing our face and hair. Frankly, I'm not ready to give up my volumizing shampoo and special conditioners and squeezable honey bottles, so here are my solutions:

1. Try to minimize these items as much as possible. Only buy what you know you need and will use.

2. Make sure the bottle is #1 or #2 plastic. These items are less toxic and more recyclable than other plastics.

3. Use every last drop! Believe it or not, at the point that you think your shampoo bottle is empty and would normally throw it away, there is at least one more week's worth of shampoo in the bottle. I have tested this. Just think, if you used your shampoo or shower gel or conditioner for one more week each time you buy it, you would end up with far less plastic being thrown into your recycle bin each year, not to mention the fact that you would save yourself quite a bit of money, and in this current economy who wouldn't want to save a little money? Here's what I do:
a) Prop the bottle upside down (I prop it up with another bottle). At this point you can use the soap, shampoo, conditioner or whatever for at least 5-7 more days.
b) When you can't squeeze another drop out, add a little water and swish it around. At this point you will have about 1-2 days worth left in the bottle.
c) Recycle bottle

Getting rid of Plastic Bags

I'm going to get right to solutions, since you can all look up the facts about plastic (and hopefully share it here!)

I mean, what did we use before plastic was invented?

We used paper and destroyed a gazillion trees, thus impacting our environment by threatening the very air we breathe. Gosh, I gotta hand it to us humans. We are so bright!

Well, now that we have learned that lesson (hopefully) we are recycling paper like crazy and I know that the grocery store I shop at uses paper bags made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper.

So let's tackle the plastic bag problem, since that is the most obvious and easiest to solve:

1. Use your own cloth bags at the grocery store. You should have several since I'm sure there are days when you want to buy more than one bag full of groceries. Cloth bags can be purchased right there at the grocery store and they are not very expensive. Or if you have someone in the family that crochets you can have them make up a few. They only take an hour or two to make.

2. If you don't have a cloth bag yet, ask for paper at the checkstand. If your grocery store does not use paper bags made from recycled paper, ask for the manager and URGE them to use recycled paper bags.

3. You can even bring your own veggie and fruit bags so you don't have to use plastic inside the plastic! Use those net laundry bags or get creative and make your own!

4. If you have any old plastic bags laying aroung the house right now, do not throw them away! You can take them to your local grocery store to be recycled or you can reuse them yourself. If you don't have your cloth grocery bags yet, you can use your old plastic bags for a pretty long time until they wear out. Then you can take them to your grocery store to recycle them.

5. Newspaper bags. If your newspaper is delivered in a plastic bag, make sure you recycle those bags too. You can also urge your delivery person to only use plastic when necessary. If you have a crafty person in the family, the plastic newspaper bags can be cut in long stips and used to crochet nice chair covers for your outdoor furniture and door mats. You can also make water bottle holders for hiking. Again, by being creative, a lot of plastic can be reused to make something useful that will keep it out of our landfills and our oceans.

OK, now I want to hear what the rest of you recommend. You can comment here or email me. I will post all ideas!

"Plastic Soup"

Recent articles talk about the discovery of a "plastic soup" of waste twice the size of the United States floating in the Pacific Ocean. It is growing at an alarming rate. I can’t imagine anyone knowing about this floating "garbage patch" and not wanting to do something about it, thus the creation of this blog. I hope to educate the public about the plastic problem and come up with solutions and try to inspire everyone to take action to stop the use of plastic.