A No Brainer - And No Brain Damage

God puts cheap booze in plastic bottles to make it clear that it's not really meant for humans to drink. The next time you see stuff like this do yourself a favor and go sober until you have more money.

This is good advice for you and great for our environment. Let's let those pieces of plastic stay at the store.

Just How Precious are Cookies?

In the big scheme of things, wouldn't you rather have your evening shattered by opening up a package of cookies to find that some were in shards and crumbs than to open a package of cookies and find that you had four pieces of non-recyclable plastic to deal with?

Welcome to Tate's, a delicious treat and maybe my favorite grocery store cookie.

In each bag comes two plastic trays full of about 10 cookies each. And, each tray is individually wrapped in plastic to keep them crispy and fresh. And they are quite crispy, these cookies. But I ask you to think about that and the consequences. Voila-

Now personally, around 9:30 most nights other than another glass of wine all I really want is a few of their chocolate chip with walnut cookies. You can taste every ingredient. But do I love these more than a clean beach? Or a healthy sea turtle. Or even more than a litter-free freeway on-ramp? I must, because I keep buying them.

But would I love them less if they were packaged in a paper tray with maybe paper wrapping each tray? Just how much less crisp would they be? I'm a fairly well-read guy and I don't recall many, if any, stories of people rampaging or killing themselves over the state of their cookies in days prior to ubiquitous plastic packaging. No, I think they just put them in a tin, like those other bits of preciousness in the kitchen, saltines. Sure, by the time they were gone some weren't as crisp but I bet they still were just fine.

Did we, the consumers, push for this packaging? I suspect not. I imagine it was the plastic industry proposing solutions to big issues way more important than something so silly as our environment.

A Week Without Plastic - Day 7

I am feeling pretty good about the challenge. I still have the rest of today to go but so far I've bought nothing that is made of plastic or primarily plastic. My only plastic purchases have been things from the grocery with plastic packaging. Not bad. My friend in Japan says that it's even more difficult there to avoid plastic since packaging is even more over the top. Which gets me to the topic of this post.

During this week of no plastic I had to refill my statin prescription. And as usual it looks like this:

For some reason Kaiser puts it in a bottle five or more times larger in capacity than necessary. I'm sure plastic has been great for the pharmaceutical industry as these bottles keep drugs dry and usually whole. But is it necessary? These little pills are really hard, I can't imagine they'd suffer from just being placed in a paper or cardboard box or envelope. Hell, I've spent many hours at a rave with 3 hits of ecstasy rolling around loose in my pocket and they survived. I'm pretty sure they weren't made with the kind of equipment Lily etc. so surely pills are sturdy enough to survive less packaging.

Kailua Beach Broke My Heart

Two years ago I went with Jerry to his home town, Kailua, for the first time. It was my first time on Oahu and I fell in love immediately, especially seeing it through the eyes of a home-town boy. We stayed at an AirBnB one house back from Kailua Beach so I went to the beach every day. Kailua Beach is regularly voted best beach in the world because of the miles of soft sand, beautiful blue water, usually without too strong of a surf and views of the gorgeous Ko'olau Mountains.  We got engaged on that beach on that trip so it's very special to me. But what is as memorable to me is how shocked I was to have to walk through swaths of decaying plastic bits to get down to the water. On that trip, maybe because of a recent storm, at the high-tide level there would be deposits two feet wide and five or more feet long - all just bits of different colored plastic.

On my last trip I made a video of it. This time I didn't find those huge collections but there was still plastic all along the beach and I know that plastic will be back with the next big storm.

A Week Without Plastic

So the Less Plastic people posted about this Facebook challenge to go a week without buying any plastic. The week started yesterday, 4/23, and I did great that day. However, here it is mid-day of day two and I've failed. I just came back from the grocery store and because I bought ham and cheese at the deli counter I ended up with these pieces of plastic.

There is a win here. I completely forgot about the deli using plastic sheets for sliced meat but when I went to the butcher counter I was all prepared to ask them to not use a piece of plastic for handling my beef. But before I could get the words out the guy grabbed a piece of paper which you can see at the top of the picture. It's made a lovely addition to my compost bin.

Grocery stores are murder for this challenge. I did mange to buy food for three meals with only that small amount of plastic. I suppose had I been more on top of it I could have skipped the cheese this week (which seems silly) and asked the woman at the deli to slice into the butcher paper they wrap with. Lesson learned.

And Now for Some Thoughts on Yogurt

What? Surely he can't be against yogurt, everyone loves yogurt. But I ask you to do this. Next time you're in a grocery store, wander over to dairy and take a look at the yogurt section and ponder the fate of our environment.

There's like ten million yogurts in every store in America. Well, at least the ones I know. That's a lot of pieces of plastic guaranteed for a single use. I can't think of a time I've seen somebody using a Chobani cup for anything. And yes, I'm sure one of you is thinking "Um, my aunt is a watercolorist and she uses them for washing her brushes" but that's one Aunt. And how many watercolorist's brushes are there to wash vs. the wall of yogurt containers at your local Safeway?

I like yogurt, you know this blog is mostly about self-shame. I don't buy it often but it's only because I buy it and then it sits in the fridge until I guilt-eat it all in one day because it's been in there for three weeks. But this isn't about my neurosis. The point is yogurt is yummy and arguably good for you so maybe this is one of those cases where we just have to accept we're going to add some plastic to the waste stream in the name of a better life for ourselves. And that has to be OK to some degree. We accept it for toothpaste and Clarins eye cream. So yogurt is fine too, right?

I had a roommate who ate yogurt every single morning of her life. And she rinsed the container out and left it in the sink. But this isn't about my dreams of murder. It's about 365 pieces of intentional waste per year. And maybe that's ok. Maybe that's the amount of plastic waste it takes to live the life you like. I don't know the answer. I'm not sure there is an answer or if an answer is even the point. (How zen of me.) I guess the point is are we aware of our choice? Or we even making a choice? Or, are we blindly (mindlessly) dumping plastic.

I wish I could say just stop, here's an alternative. And you'd think that by now there would be a feminist dairy collective making yogurt and hitting all of the farmers markets to sell their yogurt bulk-style, ladling it into your carefully washed crock that you brought with you- like the growler approach to beer but for yogurt. And that might actually fly here in the bay area, but I can't see it happening broadly. And what happened before plastic? I guess everyone who ate yogurt made it themselves at home and I'm not about to try to convince anyone that's a great plan. Though you could probably do it in that pickling setup you got a few years ago at the office holiday party. No, there isn't really an option I can think of.

So is this a carbon offset kind of thing? Maybe if we want to eat yogurt every day or a whole bunch we have to agree we'll never use a plastic bag or a roll of saran wrap and we'll only buy bamboo toothbrushes. (Oh I've got my eyes on you, Philips Sonicare, you demon of feeling clean.) Like I said, I don't have an answer here. And maybe that's why I get so uneasy in the dairy section.

The Plastic Conundrum or How I Lost the War

We saw Hamilton last night which was fun and really good but I was faced with the choice that till now I've been able to avoid - the sippy cup. As you can see I lost the battle. There's a thread through this blog about how hard it is to reduce your plastic consumption and how it sometimes it doesn't feel like it's in your best interest. This is one of those cases.

For those of you who don't know, SHN is the company that produces the Best of Broadway series of shows in San Francisco. At some point in the past few years they introduced the above spill-resistant cups (it comes in a larger size too) that you can buy, have filled with booze, and bring into the theater. Anyone who knows me is wondering how I could have possibly avoided these until last night knowing how much I like my booze but it's really just a technicality. A good friend bought me a drink in one at a previous show but only last night did I agree to spend my own money on it. Because I'm weak.

Fun fact, Darren Chris in character as Hedwig teased the audience and SHN about the "$17 sippy cups" during his run here last year. It was funny and maybe hit home because they didn't seem as expensive last night, but that's not the point here. The point is that I've always said NO to these because they're really thick #6 plastic that's just going to get thrown away. It's so wasteful. And as much as I love slurping down wine in any location, until last night I declined to participate (except that one time as a gift recipient- I'm not rude).

Now in all truth they do allow you to bring them back with you to future shows and have them re-filled. And I suppose there's at least one East-Bay or Marin hippie type who's done that, but I can assure you when I exited the theater last night I was the only one carrying their empty and I stepped over a long line of them on the floor as I was leaving my seat.

So here's where I stand on this. Huzzah! to SHN for coming up with a solution that lets us booze it up during the show. This is a life saver in many ways. Boo! to SHN for forcing people to buy these cups. Isn't there a greener way to get us drunks drunk?

Life isn't easy, people.