Small observation today:
Today we stopped by one of our favorite veggie stores, and we noticed at the till that they were taking green beans from a cardboard box and putting them into plastic bags for 'convenient' sale. What would be so bad about selling them loose, like they do for bean sprouts? They lost at least one sale for doing that (I would have gone for some green beans). Hopefully in the future, more people will stand up and say 'no thank you' to items packaged wastefully, and then vendors will start to think twice before suffocating everything in plastic doom.
-Sheri
Monday, March 14, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Bring it Back
Recently we've made a few plastic purchases in error, and some of them we've avoided putting into our box of shame (which is actually itself a plastic bag from that bridal fair) by bringing them back to the merchants we bought them from. For instance, my Valentine's Day rose from Miles came with a little water-holder-on-the-stem thingy, so we took that back to the florist because there's no reason it cannot be reused. We also bought a jar of mustard that had a plastic seal around the lid. The seal was practically invisible and most of the other jars of the same product did not have the seal. We returned that to the grocery store and exchanged it for one of its plastic-free brothers.
This isn't much different from a scenario at restaurants where a waitress may bring us something plasticky without thinking, such as crackers for our soup or candies with the bill. We will remind her in a friendly way about the plastic plan and they are always good sports about taking them away from us and reusing them for other restaurant patrons. Of course, this doesn't always work - if there's a straw, we have to take it. If there are dip cups or sandwich toothpicks with decorative foof on the ends, they can't be taken back because the restaurants will not reuse them.
We recently made a big slip-up in a restaurant and walked away with two foofed toothpicks and two straws, which we didn't even notice until partway through the meal, so engrossed were we in our conversation. It was weird to discover ourselves mindlessly sipping water with straws like that. We did manage to send the cracker packs back, though, and the candies that came with the bill. On the other hand, we went back to a restaurant that had previously accosted us with plastic and had a delightfully plastic-free meal - we had to be pretty diligent but we managed. Hopefully one day, our awareness will spread to the populace in general, and we won't need to be as hyper-diligent because our society's habits will have changed.
-Sheri
This isn't much different from a scenario at restaurants where a waitress may bring us something plasticky without thinking, such as crackers for our soup or candies with the bill. We will remind her in a friendly way about the plastic plan and they are always good sports about taking them away from us and reusing them for other restaurant patrons. Of course, this doesn't always work - if there's a straw, we have to take it. If there are dip cups or sandwich toothpicks with decorative foof on the ends, they can't be taken back because the restaurants will not reuse them.
We recently made a big slip-up in a restaurant and walked away with two foofed toothpicks and two straws, which we didn't even notice until partway through the meal, so engrossed were we in our conversation. It was weird to discover ourselves mindlessly sipping water with straws like that. We did manage to send the cracker packs back, though, and the candies that came with the bill. On the other hand, we went back to a restaurant that had previously accosted us with plastic and had a delightfully plastic-free meal - we had to be pretty diligent but we managed. Hopefully one day, our awareness will spread to the populace in general, and we won't need to be as hyper-diligent because our society's habits will have changed.
-Sheri
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Been a while...
It's been a while since we last posted on here. It's not that we're losing interest in the project - o contraire mon frere - it's just that it's going so smoothly. Really this isn't as hard as I expected. We buy some items at different places than we used to, we do without a couple things that we like but overall it's not a big deal to do without plastic.
We do have some challenges on the horizon though. We're moving to Fort Saint John in a couple of weeks and not only will we need to find plastic free options in our new location but we will have fewer options in this smaller and more convenience oriented community. We're going to be pretty busy but we'll try to keep the posts coming.
-Miles
We do have some challenges on the horizon though. We're moving to Fort Saint John in a couple of weeks and not only will we need to find plastic free options in our new location but we will have fewer options in this smaller and more convenience oriented community. We're going to be pretty busy but we'll try to keep the posts coming.
-Miles
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