Confession Time

June is *finally* over. This week, as we resume our less calculated and much easier plasticized life, we can buy things like dish soap and cleaner and yogurt and granola again. Oh, the relief! But, that's not to say that a month of attempting to forgo plastic hasn't made for some lasting change: we are more conscious of our choices than we used to be. Trying to avoid all things plastic, we've had to look for creative alternatives to some of our usual purchases and it turns out some of those make a lot of sense. And, I've had to get over my discomfort with insisting on no plastic. It's become kind of automatic. I just hope that the girls at Epi-Dor - where we buy bread and eat sandwiches several times a week - find it endearing rather than extremely annoying.

So here's the final count of the plastic we did end up purchasing in June, mostly inadvertantly but sometimes not (as previously stated, we weren't planning to go without drinking water all month... or, apparently, sour cream) :

9 or so culligan lids (to be honest, I stopped keeping track)
1 bottle of bleach
1 bottle of laundry detergent
1 plastic baggie
1 jar lid (peanuts)
1 baguette bag
1 bag of flour
The ends of Ben's new used shoelaces
2 packages of crackers
5 plastic bags
plastic container of cheese (in very misleading cardboard packaging)
1 plastic twistie-tie
1 straw
2 sets of plastic silverware
1 container of sour cream
plastic-wrapped green peppers
1 package of pita bread

Crazy, right? I'm asking myself how we managed to purchase that much plastic while we were intentionally trying NOT to. One of these days I hope to get around to a thoughtful analysis of the global effects of our plastic consumption (so, in case you're still trying to understand why we would take on this crazy experiment, check back soon).