The Grasshopper and the Ants

We really blew it.

We should have been spending this whole past summer buying (or even growing) fresh produce and freezing it. Now there will be no frozen berries to enliven our winter days, no frozen peas to bejewel our casseroles, no lima beans to keep our roast chickens company.We won't get rickets: in this climate, there is plenty of fresh, local produce year-round. Brussels sprouts are a pretty good consolation prize for the advent of dark days and icky weather. Still, twelve months is a long time to go without raspberries. We fiddled our whole summer away and put up nothing. What on earth were we thinking?

Eau là là

Here are two recent innovations in Europe to reduce the ubiquitous plastic water bottle:


lhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8016115/Italy-bans-the-plastic-water-bottle-along-heritage-coastline.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/21/paris-park-fizzy-water-tap

In the Dead of Night

Some years ago we contacted the Oregonian and asked that the paper be delivered naked, without the plastic bag that is pro forma in these rainy parts. Our paper guy was perfectly cheerful about our request and has never screwed up. Once in a while he goes on vacation and the paper comes bagged, but otherwise the arrangement's gone off without a hitch.

Other plastics have inveigled themselves onto our front porch, though, without discussion. In the wee hours of the morning today, our paper was served with a cereal sample. Macy's buys full-page ads on the inside of the paper, but General Mills has a different approach: they buy a one-time delivery service. A mini-box of Fiber One (with a plastic bag encasing the cereal inside, of course), a Fiber One breakfast bar encased in not-even-recyclable plastic, and a coupon came together in an obnoxiously large plastic bag, unbidden by us and of course unwanted.

Then a little while later someone left a copy of this year's Yellow Pages -- redundant and pointless in the Internet age, tree-killing and of course enveloped in a plastic bag -- on our porch.

We will make some phone calls, return the phone directory if we can, ask to be taken off lists, ask if we can be exempted from all these unasked-for freebies that come with the paper. We don't know if these actions will actually save plastic on the other end. What becomes of the extras? Do they serve any useful end? For all we know, our paper itself does come sheathed in film, and our paper guy just slips it out each early morning before dropping the paper at our door -- happily obliging our eccentricities, merrily unaware of our purposes, chucking the bag in the garbage can on his way back to the car.

Sneaky Plastics

We're starting to see a pattern.

We're pretty good at avoiding the plastics we know about. But plastics are everywhere, and sometimes they sneak into our lives without our being aware of them. The straw that comes with the drink you order. The tiny spout under the metal lid on a glass jar of olive oil. The party favors.

The what? Well, I had a mammogram earlier this week, a process that entails an impressive amount of squashing of delicate female parts. They want you to come back every year, so they entice you to the office with free coffee and Sudoku puzzles, and when the strange indignity is over they give you a present. My present was wrapped in brown paper with a pink bow, but when I got it home it turned out to be bath crystals in, wouldn't you know it, a plastic bag.

I think this year of no plastics is going to turn on anticipating these tiny acts of plastic transfer, and getting into some habits: "NO BAG." "NO LID." "NO STRAW." "No, thank you."

A Slip-Up, a Judgment Call and a Singularly Uninteresting Soup

You may recall that I'm skipping soups that come in aseptic containers and endeavoring to cook my school lunches myself. Today I made a soup -- a real soup, from a reputable cookbook, not some feeble effort of my own -- and remembered why I don't cook. Granted I had to leave out the soy sauce because I can't do soy. And the cooking sherry. I don't exactly know what cooking sherry is, but we surely don't have any, so I threw in a little red wine instead. The finished soup, though it had lovely barley and mushrooms in it, was bland. I added some extra salt and butter, but to little avail. So then I opened a can of black beans and dumped them in, and now I have a high-protein version of the original that still looks and tastes like dirty dishwater, with chunky bits.

Meanwhile, we realized that not only our peanut butter jar but also our jam jars come with little plastic rings of purity around them. I don't know what we will do. We might prevail upon our friend Melissa, a prodigious homemade jam-maker, to see us through the year. Either that or reconsider the Parameters. This much I know: without jam, Rick will perish. Jam is one of the Four Food Groups (the others being mustard, cookies, and barbecue sauce -- all with similar attendant problems.)

And I found myself skewered on the horns of a dilemma Saturday. I attended an all-day workshop for which I had paid a fee that included the cost of a "sack lunch." But in that sack, of course, was a sandwich wrapped in plastic film and a salad in a plastic clamshell. I'd already bought it; no plastic would be spared if I were to turn it down (and I'd have been useless for the second half of the workshop.) But now I know I have to think ahead about things like that, and probably make phone calls and ask for special exceptions to be made on my funny little experimental behalf.

Our First Trip to the Grocery Store

Sunday is shopping day, and we went prepared, even more than usual, laden with clean used plastic and paper bags for bulk items. Truth is we'd picked all the low-hanging fruit a long time ago: we've long been in the habit of avoiding plastic packaging as much as seemed practical, and bought a lot of things in bulk already, nearly always with our own re-used bags. Here are the changes we are making:

* I am throwing over ready-made soup in asceptic containers (because it has a plastic pop-top) and planning to make my own soups. Ask me in a month how that's going; I need to leave for work in an hour, and the barley is simmering away, hard as tiny pebbles, as I write.)

* Polenta is one of our staples but we always before bought it ready-made in plastic tubes. Now we are buying uncooked polenta in bulk and preparing it ourselves. Preparation involves boiling it in water. I think we can handle it.

* Tortillas are another staple and of course they come in plastic bags. We bought bulk flour and are going to endeavor to make our own. Ask me in a month...

* The third staple that traditionally generates a lot of plastic is feta cheese. It's the only dairy product either of us eat, and it's spendy and comes from French sheep, and I have to say it is one of life's deepest joys. I was prepared to go to some lengths to get it. Normally we buy it in those flat round plastic containers, recyclable, yes, but we get one every week and they add up. So we talked to the deli guys about our project, and they were great. The feta comes from France in honkin' huge blocks, in buckets of brine, and the deli guys can cut it into chunks of any size and dimension. So I asked for a chunk, like so, to be wrapped in brown waxed paper. Then I popped it into a pyrex container of my own I'd brought from home. No problem. This method is a variation on the pot-pie approach: it's not a violation of state law for the deli guy to simply hand you your food unpackaged. What you do with it after that is your own business.

* We screwed up a little, too. Peanut butter in a glass jar with a metal lid seems a paragon of virtue, but in fact it has a little protective ring of plastic around the outside of the lid that we didn't think about. Of course you can get pb in bulk, grinding it yourself, but it's not nearly as yummy as Adam's. We'll have to give that one some thought.

The First Deadly Sin

For some years now I have been slathering myself with sunscreen during all daylight hours, 365 days a year. Mind you, I live in the Pacific Northwest, where the cloud cover nine months of the year is a wool blanket. There is exactly no chance that a ray of tanning or burning sunlight can penetrate it. Ergo, I cannot make the argument that I'm protecting myself from skin cancer. I'm afraid it's all in the service of Vanity.

Skin-care experts (most of them sellers of sunscreen, I suppose) tell us that only three evils are responsible for wrinkled skin: cigarettes (not an issue for me); the passage of time (don't know of any OTC products that address that); and light. Every time a UV ray, however feeble, reaches our skin, it wrinkles it just that tiny bit more. So I've made a practice of embalming myself in sunscreen. Vanity.

(I've reasoned that I have lost time to make up for. I was an adolescent in an era when we basted ourselves in mineral oil and went to "lie out" in the back yard. The boredom nearly killed me, but I did it in the service of Vanity.)

Sunscreen poses ethical issues for me beyond those of my own character. The stuff is contributing to the demise of the coral reefs. Even if you live in Kansas, it rinses off, and that water eventually reaches the sea, right? Avobenzone and other unpronounceables in commercial sunscreens are toxic to the already fragile and threatened corals. I've tried all the groovy non-toxic susncreens on the market, but they go on like cake frosting and make you look like you're ready for Kabuki theater.

So now that we're doing the no-plastics year, I really, really can't justify the Coppertone. I'm setting aside what I've got on hand until the summer months (when they will fall under the Parameter of medical necessity) and bravely going bareskinned.

And if you see a woman driving in the rain this winter in a wide-brimmed hat, dark glasses and kid gloves, you'll know who she is.

Bagels and Pot Pies and Bags, Oh My!

Oh boy oh boy! Our first challenges!

Remember that we've been traveling and haven't gone grocery shopping since we got back -- so there's virtually nothing to eat in the house. I made a nice breakfast burrito with canned refried beans, a tortilla, and an egg. Rick looked in the fridge and then said in a desultory voice, "I want bagels."

Bagels, of course,come in a plastic bag. Unless you buy them the expensive way, what Rick calls "by the each."

Maybe you could take your own bag into the bagel shop and ask to buy them in bulk? Off Rick went to the bagelerie, but he lost his nerve, or something, and ended up buying an expensive single bagel to eat on the spot, with a cup of hot chocolate (not in a to-go cup, of course.) Maybe another day.

But then he had a great triumph at the grocery store. Summer is over; the fall rains, dreary gray skies and relentless chill have set in, but there's good news: it's pot-pie season. Our groc shop makes homemade pot pies so fabulous they almost make winter worth it. So Rick went to the pot-pie counter and asked to be handed the pies without said pies first being stuffed into baggies, which is the usual practice. State law is stern about the matter of deli items going into second-hand containers: it's a no-no, because of the cooties. But it seems that if no second-hand container is involved in the transaction, and the pie is just handed directly to the customer to bag for himself, well then...

Just Under the Wire

As great good luck would have it, several critically important items in my life made with plastic conked out and were replaced just before the Sept. 15 deadline.

First, my two old printers expired on the same day. I took them to Free Geek -- a local place that takes donations of second-hand electronics to be disassembled and reassembled with what's salvageable and that recycles what cannot be reused. I ordered a new printer the day we left for vacation, knowing there wouldn't be time to find one when we got back before The Experiment started.

Then, unbeknownst to me, my wonderful family conspired in our absence to get us a new computer. The old computer, which I'd bought when my nearly-20-year-old was in sixth grade, was like an ancient arthritic dog, struggling to get on its feet every morning and hobbling with every step. I was in despair: it really needed to be put down, humanely, but a new computer would be chockablock full of plastic.

But lo! The aforementioned child, who has discovered a passion for building computers, and my parents, who hate to see me suffer, slyly got together while Rick and I were in Yosemite. Sam contributed his time and expertise and my folks ponied up for those components that needed to be bought -- some parts of the computer were salvaged from other computers -- and together they made us a magnificent new computer that bounds through its tasks like an excited puppy.

Parameters of the Experiment

A few readers might arrive at the doorstep of this blog wondering why, or even, why on earth? But I suspect most readers drawn to this site already have a pretty good handle on why, and what they want to know is how.

How, therefore, will be the focus of this blog for the next twelve months, as my partner-in-saving-the-world and I endeavor to live a life free, or very nearly free, of plastics in every form. I'll dip into why from time to time, but mostly I'll be writing about the practical challenges, inspirations, frustrations, workarounds and insights we have as we try to navigate daily life without modern life's most ubiquitous synthetic polymers.

On a recent road trip -- a kind of Mardi Gras to our long impending Lent -- we set out some parameters for our experiment:

1. We will trust each others' judgment; we don't have to call each other in the middle of the day to make agonizing mutual decisions about purchases. But we'll check in daily, or nearly daily, about our experiences and I will blog accordingly. I promise to quote Rick sounding funny and charming.

2. When we run into purchases that we consider truly necessary for which there exists no alternative, we will cringe and buy plastic, making those decisions on a case-by-case basis. (Example: Rick may very well need a new vehicle some time in the coming year. Vehicles contain vinyl, which is the root of all evil. But what are ya gonna do?)

3. We make an exception to the no-plastics rule for items of medical necessity, including vitamins and over-the-counter and prescription meds.

4. We make an exception for cat food. (No, cat food isn't made of plastic, except maybe the kind from China. Though bulk cat food exists, our four cats eat a prescription food from the vet -- see Rule # 3 -- that comes only in huge plastic bags.)

5. We each get one free pass per month. (We may have to further refine this parameter. I was thinking along the lines of cheese, but what if one of us wants to spend our free pass on, say, a Zeppelin?)

6. Without becoming profligates, we will cut ourselves slack while travelling, because we will have less control over our purchases and fewer options.

7. Our main aim is to avoid creating demand for the manufacture of new plastic items. If an alternative to plastic (such as glass) is not an option, we will look for second-hand versions of the items we seek.

8. We may end up spending silly amounts of time on this experiment, or burning up extra fossil fuels in our pursuit to be plastic-free, or otherwise using resources in ways that are not sensible. We are not going to worry about it. To try to be perfect is madness, and we are mentally ill enough as it is.