If I had a clue it would be so hard to shed 10 pounds of plastic, I wouldn’t have resolved to do it. Now, after 10-plus months, a 10 pound reduction seems unreasonable and unattainable. I have not done the math, but I don’t think I can make it, unless I move to a deserted island. Even then, recollecting the gyre, the reason I vowed to do this thing, tons of plastic might wash ashore.

Today, I only left my house to run and to check the mail, yet bits of plastic came to me like metal flakes to a magnet. I swear I attract it.

Returning from my run, I saw each house on my street had a paper flung onto the drive. “Oh boy, a crossword!” When did they quit using rubber bands for news papers and stuff them in plastic bags? I loomed over mine for a moment and considered leaving the paper and the bag in the driveway. It would not go away, all my neighbors got a paper too, so they had no reason to take it off my hands. I took it inside to read cranky letters to the editor and look for the crossword puzzle. I pulled the bag off, tied it in a French knot and put it with the dwindling stash of plastic bags in my cupboard. I’ll reuse it for something.

Mid morning the doorbell rang. I froze at my desk, breathless for a moment, then slunk to carefully peer around the corner, knowing there might be an annoying solicitor peeking back at me through the door’s side window, or I would hear a delivery truck roll away. It was the later. I took in a breath, opened the door and picked up a FedEx envelope left on my doorstep. It had a plastic sleeve to hold an absent airbill, the barcoded shipping label was glued to the front. Even though it was clearly addressed to Ed, I couldn’t resist opening it. He’s been in Ohio and my snooping would save him time and bother when he gets home. (I’m such a thoughtful wife.) I opened it, therefore I take full ownership even though only half of the contents were actually for me. Inside were uniform insignia tapes packed in enough plastic to construct a raincoat. Sixteen baggies to hold sixteen small embroidered pieces of cloth tape. Really, I kid you not, each insignia in an individual zipbag! I can’t imagine any second use for the bags which have quarter inch holes drilled at the top for hanging on a display rack, so anything small enough to fit, seeds for instance, will fall out of the hole. I could mail the empties back to the uniform distribution center, or better yet the manufacturer, but chances are they would open my envelope, wonder why some nut mailed them trash and toss them anyway. Oh well.

Mid afternoon I brought in the mail. The November issue of Sailing Magazine came in a plastic bag so the holiday catalog of sailing jewelry could get into my hot little hands. I leaf through it year after year wondering who could possibly afford, and want, a sterling silver monkey’s fist bottle stopper, or an 18 karat gold, open barrel, turnbuckle hinged bracelet. I suppose some yacht owner with a huge wallet and a little tiny brain will be ordering a trinket for Lovie. I myself own six open barrel turnbuckles, none of them for show. Mine are on my boat, made of stainless steel and hold up the mast. I could barely afford them. After marveling at the photos of gleaming excess, I tossed the catalog into the recycle bin and the plastic bag into the trash.

Then I attended to our mundane mail; a credit card application — which we still get, probably because we forgo the turnbuckle bracelets — it came complete with a thin plastic replica of a credit card; and a Travelers Insurance letter with a plastic “priority quote card” glued to it. Both cards embossed with my name went into the trash — identifying me for a millennium as the culprit who threw them away. Damn.

For the month of October. I will estimate an avoidance of 14 ounces of plastic “stuff.”

Because I did so poorly avoiding poly in September, I have put off telling about the results.

First, I took a head-over-heals dismount from my bike, knocking my head, which was thankfully encased in a quality plastic helmet. Wearing a bike helmet surely saved me from a nasty knot on the noggin. Because it is recommended a helmet be replaced after taking a significant blow, I bought a replacement brain-bucket. What I got is very light — 275 grams, or 9.7 ounces — but virtually all plastic. I justified the purchase as a fair trade for prevention of brain injury. Brain damage suffered in a subsequent bike crash — because of a possibly degraded helmet — might be permanent, but only in reference to my head. The plastic helmet will exist on, and on, long after my hopefully mostly intact brain and I are dust. Still, I recalled when my brother was in neurological intensive care, I noted how medical care uses an incredible amount of plastic. I could argue that the helmet purchase, by potentially keeping me out of intensive care, could result in saving oodles of catheter tubes, syringes, splints, etc., so I won’t count my helmet as a plus.

In September I was also busy planning a woman’s sailing event. In spite of my efforts to keep the Ladies’ Day @ the Lake plastic free, I was inundated with poly bags, foam packing peanuts, and other plastic packaging as I received shipments of donated items for event goody bags. While I was very grateful to get so many nice items for our participants, it was a disappointment to see so much plastic packaging used for materials that had no chance of transport damage. Even if a fleet of UPS trucks had run over one particular box, its unbreakable contents would not have crumbled or broken. Another donor offered several dozen plastic thermal cups he wanted to get rid of. He claimed he had them in storage for years. I gladly accepted, plastic or not. Hey, that plastic already existed! I was not consuming, but rather putting to good use what was already there. I printed sleeve inserts (on recycled paper) for the cups. I tried to make them special, in hopes each recipient would use their fantastic, functional cups for the rest of their days, then pass the treasure down to their first-born. Three cases of bottled water were purchased for the event — even though I suggested coolers. I cringed when I saw recycling bins at the venue filling with one-use bottles. I could have insisted, so I’ll take partial ownership, say half liability, or around two pounds of resulting trash.

Putting on a complicated event kept me hopping. When Ed and I hosted nearly twenty folks for dinner after a challenging work day, the evening before, I asked Ed to run to the store to buy a “box” of greens. I didn’t pointedly tell him “Get one of those big PLASTIC containers of salad stuff,” but I didn’t instruct him to get a few heads of lettuce either. He knew my time limitations and brought home the most convenient salad fixing he could muster. I was glad not to have to wash, dry, pick and break fixings for a huge salad. Even though I’ll use the resulting box for storage, I must own up to a few ounces of packaging I really did not want, solely for saving a few minutes of preparation time.

Other than that, I did okay, about the same as August. In total, I will call September a two pound, two ounce, back slide month.

Robert W. Service (you know, the famous bard of the Yukon) wrote,”It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.”

In August, my efforts to reduce my plastic use further has hit a wall, or a sand dune. The tidbits of plastic I never gave a thought to before make up a shifting hump that I can not seem to pass over. I can’t navigate around the mountain of little plastic stuff.

This month I looked for shampoo that comes in a bar but could not find any, so I bought the biggest plastic jug I could find, one without the luxury of a pump dispenser and associated extra material. I could have researched on the net, but I did not, I gave in to laziness and did the easy thing, picking up the jumbo bottle and putting it my grocery cart. The same trip I also bought a giant plastic bottle of sunscreen. I do all sorts of outdoor stuff, know the awful sound of the word “cancer” in reference to my body, and I share sunscreen with Ed, who burns in the moon light. I chalked that purchase up as absolutely necessary. Those were the only two plastic bottles I brought in the house this month. Bottles are not so hard to avoid except for personal items. No bottled soda, no bottled water, no bottled condiments (unless glass is available), easy and doable.

Having eliminated most of the big, obvious plastic waste from my consumption, if I want to do more I am faced with doing without or avoiding small stuff. The caps, tabs, lids, and wraps are like the grains of sand Mr. Service referred to. I have thoroughly congratulated myself for doing without the packaging associated with sliced or grated cheese, ready-made salad dressing, and passing on purchasing new flipflops, but I continued to wink at the juice box with the plastic cap or the Popsicle wrapper. “Unavoidable,” I rationalized. The small stuff is easy to disregard or justify.

The little plastic things fall into my hands like sand slips into a shoe, collecting in tiny annoying piles. I went to my dentist to get a regular cleaning and found myself afterward in my car looking through a plastic bag with a plastic tooth brush inside a plastic bubble mounted to cardboard, a plastic box of floss, a sample of toothpaste in a plastic tube with a plastic lid and a tiny coupon in a small plastic bag. God forbid that coupon be soiled by touching the toothbrush packaging. I need to brush my teeth, and floss. I get big globs…well you don’t need details. My old toothbrush had bristles that looked like Einsteins’ hair and surely it’s not possible to buy a wooden tooth brush with stiff boars hair bristles wrapped in paper anywhere in my neighborhood. The floss — I bet the floss itself is a polymer. It sure seems plastic-like. The box certainly was. I know there are button-like metal floss containers but if you buy such a thing in the store it is boxed in a fist-sized or bigger plastic clam shell, to keep dishonest shoppers from conveniently dropping the tiny package in their pocket as it is eventually intended. This month I watched as Ed bought a large plastic bag of plastic floss bows with picks. He can’t seem to get the knack of the wrap around the fingers floss. It was a choice of many bits of plastic, or Ed with gingivitis. I opted for the plastic and kept my well-flossed mouth shut.

Digging through my recycle bin and trash cans today, for a cursory pre-report accounting, I noticed all the bits; the lids, tags and wrappers I have tried to discount as not mattering much, but I know they do. I just have not figured out how to keep them from collecting around me as I walk through life. Next month, I will shake out my shoes and work on reducing the use of little plastic things.

For the month of August. I will estimate an avoidance of 12 ounces of plastic “stuff.”

My July started out well, I continued to make gains, or rather losses, by sticking to plastic avoidance rigorously. I bought big, heavy blocks of cheese, eliminating wraps for what would have been several smaller packages. Regular Catalina dressing purchases stopped when I concocted an Ed-approved home brew. I was feeling pretty cocky before it happened. I fell off the plastic wagon — in a big way. Ed and I went to Trader Joe’s.

Upon entering the store, I immediately noticed Joe’s is packed with plastic! What happened to the old Trader Joe’s where you could pick up a head of lettuce or a few tomatoes without a hint of packaging. We did not purchase any produce for that reason, but the temptation was so great for an array of goodies, when we wheeled up to the checkout stand, our cart had more synthetic polymers than a Dow laboratory. Scones, bagged in plastic drug across the scanner. Bleep. Blue cheese, wrapped in plastic. Bleep. Nuts in plastic bags. Bleep. Plastic by the pound slid past. Oops.

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In honor of all my sailing friends hanging out on Catalina Island this week, I won’t rename the salad dressing I concocted yesterday. I thought the ingredients were weird to begin with, but as is my nature, I had to do my own thing to make the blend even more bizarre. Licking it from my finger to compare it to the store bought, Ed declared it “just as good”. Regardless of the odd ingredients, he liked it.

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It’s taken me six months to conclude that most plastic I unwittingly used to bring home was solely for convenience. I’ve learned when grocery shopping to root out, or at least recognize and minimize, unnecessary plastic. Salad in a bag, for example, is a time saver conveniently supplying a dump-n-eat healthy dish that I no longer purchase.

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My garden has begun to bear fruit and I have taken on the persona of Elmer Fudd, haplessly trying to detour the wildlife from the great buffet. I don’t have a bounty. The squirrels, rabbits and birds have seen to that. I’ve been able to eek out a few salads and have more spring onions than a family of fifteen (humans) could hope to eat. The plan is to pick a slew of tomatoes soon. Presently they are immature, green and hard. The varmints are licking their chops waiting for the first blush of ripeness. I’ll outsmart them, somehow.

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I painted my retired (white) running shoes black so I would not have to buy new ones to go with my Coast Guard Aux summer ODU (Operational Dress Uniform).*

Black is black

The Coast Guard Auxiliary is all about regulations — many of them aimed at herding cats, like me, into wearing a proper uniform. To complicate compliance, rules change with a regularity that sets those slow to adapt or resisters, like me, almost constantly out of sync. I have not been on patrol for quite a long stint and during my hiatus I have ignored the details, as well as the broad uniform rule changes. I confirmed last last week the summer ODU (Operational Dress Uniform) required black athletic shoes which I didn’t have.

So here I go. Read more

The Gyre, a plastic littered site in the middle of the ocean, inspired me to promise to consume 10 pounds less plastic this year. The Gyre is so out of sight, it is so easy to ignore, it is so simple to forget and not care about. This weekend, as I walked to the marina at Lake Pleasant, I took this photo of a local mini-gyre. The environmental disgrace is so near my home I have to take it personally.

Spring winds have whipped Lake Pleasant and it rained several days ago. The lake’s water level has risen to capacity. This combination pushes floating material windward into compacted surface mats, mostly along Pleasant’s shorelines. These mats are for the greater part brown mulchy organic material; dead leaves, swollen twigs and rotting cacti with still-dangerous barbs. The sad fact is the organic matter is punctuated with plastic; bottles, wrappers, even flip-flops.

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On my last trip to the grocery store I found myself planted in the middle of an aisle agonizing over a purchase of white cider vinegar.

Each visit to the store makes me smarter about what is a reasonable use of plastic and what is not.
Both Ed and I have become very good at avoiding unnecessary packaging, especially if it’s plastic.
I’ve come to the conclusion there are a few foods, tofu for example, that only come in plastic. Period.
I accept now that some packaging is not only not so bad, but actually the only pragmatic choice.
Am I selling out because I buy tofu, cheese or a few veggie burgers? Maybe, but they only come in plastic, so I excuse myself.

But the vinegar was another story. I had a choice. Read more