A Week With No Plastic - Day 3 and 4

Day 3: Today was a disaster! My husband's favourite store is Costco and really what is not to love? Everything is in big quantities which is great for a family of 5. Costco carries tones of organic and healthy food and it is a one-stop shop where you can get everything from toilet paper to bread to avocados to the latest books all at great prices. I told him about the plan to go there without getting any plastic and he laughed at me. He was right, what not to love about Costco is that everything is wrapped in plastic and often double wrapped! We needed pears and apples and zucchini and peppers and cherry tomatoes and cucumbers and toilet paper and yogurt and they all came with plastic! I wasn't at the store and didn't do the shopping so I have a little less plastic guilt than I would have if I put all those things in my cart. I've always appreciated that Costco doesn't provide bags at the checkout. We always bring our own. I'd be really interested to see the price difference of grocery shopping at Costco versus another grocery store. My guess is that our grocery bill would be twice the price. I'm pretty convinced that there are only two choices when trying to go plastic free - buy nothing or spend a lot of money and time trying to shop for groceries. I'm going to try a redo of Day 3 (really a redo of the week) I realized today that it needs to be a week where I do all the grocery shopping. Leaving it to someone else when they don't feel as strongly about the anti-plastic idea as I do, isn't going to work.

As for my plastic consumption today, there was some, kind-of. I spent the day with the talented and fun children's musician, Will Stroet and his lovely wife Kim. My kids love Will and if you don't know his music - you should! Anyway, Kim bought me a coffee (yes with a plastic lid - I couldn't really ask her to bring it back without one!) I also bought Will's latest CD - Just Imagine (which happens to be my favourite word) for the kids. The CD of course came wrapped in plastic. Although, I didn't deal with it since he unwrapped it and signed the CD for my kids. Does that count? I'm sure it does. To live without plastic, you'd need to download everything. Today was a hard day. We really need to try that again. Although, I'm pretty sure that Costco has become an essential part of our lives. I can't imagine (lol) not shopping there again. This no plastic thing is such a tradeoff and a real sacrifice for your ideals.

Day 4: Another no shopping day! Yay, that was easy, I bought nothing. The day was filled with hockey and running and skiing and didn't even involve any hot chocolate. There was of course some plastic involved even on this no shopping day. I picked up the kids ski passes today and they are printed plastic cards. It is amazing how much more I notice plastic now that I have been thinking about ways to reduce our use of it. I made a fruit crumble today to bring to a friends house for dinner and wrapped in plastic wrap. If I didn't own plastic wrap what would I use - a dishtowel? Some paper? It is in a really large pan, I'm not sure how I'd transport it cleanly without plastic.

I don't think I've had one truly successful anti-plastic day yet. Maybe tomorrow? I'll write another update after Day 5 and 6 and then I'll start planning the redo week and how to properly attempt a week without plastic as this week was obviously a fail.