A Week With No Plastic - Day 1 and 2

In honour of Earth Day, our family is going without plastic for one week. I know one week is very small compared to the one year that the families in this video went without plastic, but I want to see if we can do it. This video has definitely made me think a lot about the amount of plastic we use and how we can reduce our use of this horrible material. I pack everything in reusable containers, use snackbags and bring my own Envirosax bags everywhere, but we still buy food in plastic containers constantly. I think that will be the hardest part for us. If we are successful at going one week without plastic, we'll aim to half our plastic consumption for the rest of the year and perhaps try a week a month without any.

Day 1:  I don't buy any plastic today, but that was easy because I didn't buy anything at all! I'm not sure how long I can go without buying anything! I don't agree with Step #1 in this video, as I don't think we should purge the plastic we currently use in order to replace it with something else. There is lots of plastic that I use constantly and plan to use for a very long time and when it isn't useful anymore, I will recycle it. Day 1 did make me think a lot about how much plastic we use. The yogurt I gave the kids this morning, the lunchbox containers and the cherry tomatoes I gave the kids for dinner all involved plastic.

Day 2: Another day of not buying anything. This no plastic thing could be great for my credit card! That too is made of plastic! We used less plastic today, but I did grab a ziplock when I was at work and wanted to bring the kids home a snack. I guess I could have wrapped it in napkin but that would have been a mess in the car. I need to get in the habit of leaving the house with an empty snack bag or two on me to fill up along the way, like I carry Envirosax roll-up bags. Although, both of those involve "plastic-like" material - polyester of some sort. I am going to try to carry cotton shopping bag and snackbag options at Giving Gifts.

Day 3 to 7 are to come follow me on my Lisa Loves! Blog where I'll post about the rest of the week which is bound to get more interesting as I will need to buy something at some point! Tonight I break the news of our week without plastic to my husband as he is going grocery shopping tomorrow. I can already imagine his shopping trip and how impossible it will be without anything pre-wrapped in plastic.

Can you do it? Can you go a week without buying anything with plastic? What about a whole year?

Lisa