Their ground rules:
1. No buying or acquiring new plastic.It's an interesting thought experiment, but I don't actually think I can do this.
2: No cooking with plastic or storing food in plastic.
3: Minimize all other plastic use.
So much of the food I buy is packaged in plastic. Yogurt, ketchup, mayonnaise, bread, hot cereal -- even gluten-free flours, dry beans and rice. (Which, now that I think about it, is odd. If King Arthur can sell flour in paper bags, why not Bob? Must be a contamination issue.)
Most of my vegetables come in a cardboard box courtesy of Urban Organic. But frequently we pick up some extras -- most often, a bag (whoops, plastic) of onions or celery.
Also, my trash gets bagged up. In plastic. It's a requirement of the building I live in that the garbage go down the building's garbage chutes in bags, so I've reverted to bringing groceries and other purchases home in plastic bags so I can then use them for the trash. (At least each bag gets used twice; I could bring cloth bags to shop, but then I'd have to buy garbage bags.)
I have food storage containers made out of glass and metal, but most of the lids are plastic. I use mason jars (with metal lids) for some food storage, but it's often impractical, especially for bringing lunches to school and work.
I sort of assume that when the organizers of this said "no cooking with plastic" they meant not microwaving stuff in plastic containers. No microwave in my house, so no problem there, but I do own a mesh strainer with ... plastic handles ... and another strainer made entirely of plastic ... and a salad spinner made ... well, you get the idea.
And what about the handles of stainless-steel pots and pans? Crock pot ... rubber feet and plastic cord. Rice cooker: plastic all over the outside. Coffee pot: stainless body, plastic base, handle, and lid. Even the knives have plastic handles. (Cast iron, at least, is completely free of plastic. Though I vaguely recall that when I bought one of the cast iron pans, there was a plastic coating I had to scrub off before use.)
Whaddya think? Am I just making up excuses, when I should be in my kitchen tossing out all the plastic containers and lobbying my building to provide an open bin for unbagged garbage?
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No, I think following their rules to the letter would be prohibitive. Like you, we buy plastic yogurt containers weekly, strain or rinse food in a plastic colander almost daily, and are required to bag our household waste (although the recycling program - in conjunction with our composting - has reduced the trash to about one bag a week). We use and buy a LOT more plastic than just that, though, so this program could certainly make many people more mindful and selective.
ReplyDeleteThanks, De. You're right that the point should be to encourage people to reduce plastic use. I shouldn't have gotten so cranky about the difficulties!
ReplyDeleteWeird. I lived in two NYC apartment buildings with trash chutes, and that was never a requirement. I used to go empty my trash loose into the chutes.
ReplyDeleteA knife with a plastic handle or an appliance with a plastic cord is not the issue here. Despite the fact that there is way too much plastic out and about, that doesn't mean that it's all bad or that it all must go. That's impractical on many fronts. Minimize and reuse, yes. Eradicate? No.