On December 4, we gave ourselves the change of going a month without buying any plastic (Soup On Wednesday - Food for Thought: Plastic Challenge). The plastic free challenge was issued by the crew of Mollymawk.
How did you do?
While we found this quite changing, it was impressively eye opening. There is plastic on or in everything. For instance, just this past Saturday we bought a cloth filter for our Melita coffee pot. We've had one in the past that worked much longer than the four months predicted. But it did finally give up the ghost. We feel this is better than constantly using the paper filters, but ... you guessed it ... the filter was plastic wrapped.
Much of Whatcom County is used to not using plastic bags, if you've brought your own, so we didn't have that issue. Yet milk (whether cow or rice) still comes in either plastic or waxed cardboard that the recyclers won't take. If we had a wood stove, maybe ...
But even our box of local food from a farm share often comes bagged in plastic bags. This isn't necessary!
The challenge encouraged us to be creative in the gift giving within our family. This became a unique and special time.
While we didn't keep detailed notes during our month, the process sure opened our eyes to all the ways plastic products surround us. And while we couldn't go the entire month plastic free, we still found it worth the challenge.
Here is how the Mollymawk crew did (with some tips) (Life Without Plastic ...).
Blessed be,
Joel
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