Plastic Fast

After spending the last two years faithfully composting all of my food waste and paper products and recycling other papers and plastics, I find it frustrating when I'm left with plastic wrappers and packaging that I can do absolutely nothing with, but throw in the trash can. As a part of my 2012 resolutions, I've decided to make a significant effort to reduce my use of plastics....in every part of my life...dining, clothing, recreation, work,.....everything! Sounds like a pretty daunting personal challenge, but I think if I set some boundaries and reasonable exceptions, it might not be too difficult.

I'm primarily motivated to start this plastic fast to reduce my contributions to the growing landfills and the toxic compounds that persist in our environment (many of which are found in plastics). Similar to my discovery of how ubiquitous dairy is in food products during my transition to a vegan/vegetarian diet several years ago, I know this plastic fast will help me become more aware of the many places that plastics are lurking in the things that I use daily.

Happy Easter Day and Belated Earth Day

I was inspired to start this blog, first by a good friend and food blogger and more recently after celebrating Earth Day (and a birthday) with friends on Friday, April 22. The hosts, who I admire in many ways for their commitment to cycling everywhere (literally EVERYWHERE!!) were decked out in their "Go-green" attire. The mood of the party was light-hearted and fun, but I couldn't help but feel heavy as I read the facts they posted around their apt. that point to American wastefulness and overconsumption. Some that I remembered (after the glass of hard cider were):

-Landfills are the largest source of anthropgenic methane emissions and methane is 20times more effecitve at trapping greenhouse gasses than CO2.

-Every year, each American throws out about 1,200 lbs of organic garbage that can be composted.

- Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour. Most (90%) of them are thrown away

-If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!

-Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.

I already compost, recycle, use reusable shopping bags, drive a prius and bicycle to work when possible, but I know there is still so much more I can do to "tread more lightly" on the earth. I made a resolution this year to generally reduce my consumption of "things" and when I do buy/consume try to buy locally produced foods and goods. Of my resolutions, these were definitely two of the most ambitious. I wasn't so much worried about the food as I was the other things. The firs thing that came to mind was "locally produced fabrics??" I assumed there may be a few textile mills in NC, but to limit myself to just those! Of course I was super psyched to learn that there are many textile mills in NC. Still need to research which ones have the most envr. friendly practices (will share these later).

I see this blog as an opportunity to share what I learn about living more sustainably with others who are interested in doing the same.