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Lisa Loves

A Week With No Plastic - Day 5 and 6

A Week With No Plastic - Day 5 and 6

Day 5: Today I shopped - well kind of! I bought a gorgeous new pair of earrings (my third pair) from Made by Lex at the store. Of course, when I refer to the store, I'm talking about Giving Gifts! We went to a friend's house for dinner and I bought her a plant for hosting us from Green with Envy. Neither purchase involved any plastic and really, most purchases at the store don't involve any plastic.

It is interesting, because it doesn't seem to matter how little I buy, I still end up using plastic each day. The dessert I brought over was covered in plastic wrap. We used plastic utensils, the kids had colourful paper/plastic plates, they played with plastic toys, the list goes on...  Plastic is everywhere!

Day 6: At this point I am getting a little depressed about my inability to have a plastic free week. But today we did it! (well almost...) We spent today, Earth Day, outdoors at our favourite beach with the kids.

We bought muffins this morning and got them in a paper bag, no plastic. We went to White Spot for lunch (yes, it was the kids' choice :) and had a plastic free meal - well almost. I forgot to tell the waitress that we didn't want straws. I will make sure to do that next time now that I am more aware of it. I did ask her not to bother bringing the Pirate Pak boats as they create so much waste. It always bothers me that they take up so much room on the table and the kids couldn't care less about them. I'm not sure why White Spot makes such a big fuss about the Pirate Paks - the waitress looked at me like I was the worst mom ever when I told her to not bother bringing the boats for the kids!

The kids also used crayons that were wrapped in plastic. A couple of simple changes for next time. I'm going to keep a snackbag in the car with crayons so that we have them for restaurants. What is the point of wasting 3 packs of crayons every time we go out?

I'm surprised I never thought of these simple changes we can make to create less waste before this week!

There were points that I am very proud of today. I received two shipments for Giving Gifts today. One from Cate & Levi and one from Zoe b Organics and neither involved any plastic. Cate & Levi items are made in Canada and Zoe B in the USA, so neither company wrapped their products in plastic bags or used plastic shipping materials - so great! I also shipped out five packages today and almost all of them had no plastic in the box and the one that did, it was all reused bubble wrap as I'd prefer glass doesn't break on its way to a customer! All in all, it was a pretty great plastic free day!


Here is a picture of the kids' dinner on their Fantastic Anti-Plastic dishes. They are made from corn! These dishes are amazing. They are completely dishwasher safe and ours look brand new even though we've been using them daily for a couple of years.

The kids had been eating all day, so they just had a light dinner. The flowers we found on our walk with the dog today. The flowers are gorgeous in Vancouver right now. It is really Spring!

As for me, I'm eating Earnest Ice Cream from the glass jar! Earnest makes the most delicious ice cream and they are committed to zero waste. I love the glass jars they package their ice cream in! The best part is that I'll return it for a refund and pick up some more ice cream - it is a continuous cycle!

We are definitely going to continue trying to reduce the amount of plastic we use. We have always been a very eco conscious family, but this week has shown me that there is so much more we can be doing. I've found one thing that I can buy guilt free but we can't survive on ice cream every week!  I will seek out other alternatives as I wasn't aware of how much we rely on plastic. I'll update my Lisa Loves! blog with ideas on how our family reduces the amount of plastic we use and please share your feedback and great ideas too. After all, small changes over time add up to big transformations.  

 

 

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