It is possible to avoid (most) plastic

A couple of weeks ago I decided to make manicotti – that beautiful Italian dish with pasta stuffed with cheese. The only problem was that I did not want to buy any ingredients in plastic….and both ricotta and mozzarella cheeses are usually sold in big plastic jars.

My new basil plant in the ricotta cheese jar

Since plastic is pretty much not recycled anymore, I decided to look for a place where I could buy the cheese not floating in plastic. After all, in Europe, they do sell cheese by weight, right? A Google search led me to The Italian Store not far from me. To my delight, they had ricotta cheese sold in metal jars and mozzarella – in plastic film. Still some plastic, but a fraction of an ounce versus a whole ounce that a normal plastic jar weighs.

And the best part was that I could reuse the metal jar for a plant. Now I have Italian basil making me happy on my windowsill. The container even had pre-made holes on the bottom – was it meant to be a plant pot?  Metal will eventually corrode and disintegrate in the earth, unlike plastic, which would stay intact for at least 450 years or for forever.

You can reduce the amount of trash you produce (and not leave it for the next generation)

Every day we produce trash.  On average, each one of us in the U.S. produces 4.4 lbs of trash daily, that’s 1,600 lbs a year for one person.  And Americans generate more trash than anyone else on Earth.

What happens to your trash once it leaves your home?  In the U.S. it goes to a landfill.  And that’s part of the issue because you stop thinking about the trash the moment you pull your trash bin to the curbside for pick-up.  Below is the picture of a closed cell  (part of the landfill that reached its capacity) in the Prince William County in Virginia.  This is a mountain filled with the trash collected in about three years.

Prince William Country Municipal landfill

On a recent trip to that landfill, I asked the compliance managers for how long this trash-stuffed mountain will need to be managed by the municipality.  “Can we ever walk away from it?” I asked.  “No, this is our trash forever.  This facility will need to be managed indefinitely to ensure no dangerous gases and toxins get into the homes around here.”  Surely this is not what we want to pass on to our children, mountains of garbage?

Here are some easy ways to reduce the amount of trash you produce in your home:

1. Consider the packaging.  If you buy juice in a carton, is the carton recyclable in your area?  If not, is there the same juice available in a plastic bottle which would be recyclable?  What about items which you can buy in bulk instead of packaged individually?  Consider what you will do with the packaging once you consume the contents.

2. Compost food scraps. In my household food scraps were about 40% of the trash contents.  I found a local organic store that collects compostables for free.  I freeze bags of food scraps and drop them off when I shop at the store.  You can also compost food scraps in your own yard or find municipal facilities that offer that service.  In Washington D.C. the city collects compostables year-round at several farmers’ markets.

3. Think of the end of life of the item you are buying . Whatever you buy eventually will need to be thrown away when it is not needed by anymore.  Can it be reused by someone after you?  Like clothing or furniture.  If not, can it be recycled?  Like plastic (with a recycling label), aluminum, or paper.  If not, will it biodegrade in the soil, like wood or iron?  If not, is there an alternative you can look into instead?  For example, we were shopping for a tarp to cover the floor for a project in the office.  Thin plastic is not recyclable in most places, so we bought a heavy duty paper tarp instead that will eventually biodegrade (plastic never will.)

 

What basket do you put your eggs into?

It hurts to see people buying eggs in Styrofoam cartons. Styrofoam has been “reasonably” linked to cancer. I personally do not need to see many studies to strongly dislike Styrofoam. Really, can foamed plastic – polystyrene beads in air – be good for your body, or the Earth? Helpfully, Washington D.C. banned it in 2014 for cooked food containers.

There are many products which are currently sold in Styrofoam, but I’ll talk about the eggs today. In a grocery store here on the East Coast you can buy eggs in three types of cartons – Styrofoam, plastic or paper. Styrofoam in not recyclable in most locations, and it may cause cancer. So, I hope you avoid it.  Plastic is recyclable in most locations, but our recycling rates, especially here in the Washington D.C. area., are pretty low – just over 20%.  Chances are that plastic carton will just stay in a landfill forever. The last and the best option is paper carton. Even if you do not place it into a recycling bin now, eventually, it will still have a chance to biodegrade, at some point, somewhere.  I have to admit that the prices you’d pay for eggs in different cartons vary – the most sustainable the packaging, the more you will pay for, mostly because of the eggs themselves.

Of course, the best option would be to reuse the same carton if you can buy eggs from a place that sells them loose. Do you have any colleagues or friends living on a farm? It can happen. By sheer luck I have such a colleague and buy eggs from her in the same carton every week.

The long life of dry clean hangers

For some time now I have been returning hangers to dry cleaners on the principle that if a business sold me something that I cannot recycle, I will let that business figure out what to do with that stuff. However, our local dry cleaner just earned my allegiance by advertising that it cares about the environment too! What is even better is that a dry cleaner can re-use hangers and not just recycle. If your local dry cleaner does not do that yet, surprise them by turning in a bag of hangers you do not need anymore. They will have to figure out what to do with them…and might even start re-using them.