It’s 3am, so I’m just going to try and make this short and sweet. Here’s the weekly tally:

Non-recyclable items used this week but purchased before the plastic project began:

• 5 Refresh Endura single-use eye drop containers (#4 plastic).
• 1 cap from a bottle of Sunera canola oil. More info on this below.
• Plastic from a blister pack of Duracell AAA batteries. As we use up disposable batteries, we’re switching to rechargeables. We still have some packages of AA’s, C’s and D’s left.
• 1 Brita faucet filter cartridge. This is the last one. We’ve switched to MultiPure. More info on that below.
• 1 wadded up ball of packing tape. Found while cleaning out a closet.

Recyclable items used up this week but bought before the project began:

• 32-oz bottle of Sunera canola oil (#1 plastic). Most of our oil now comes in glass bottles. We use a lot of olive oil and have recently begun using Salute Sante grapeseed oil ^[1], which comes in a metal can, in place of canola oil. Grapeseed oil has a very mild flavor, like canola oil, but a much higher smoking point.

And that’s all the old stuff. Now for the new plastic waste.

• 1 wrapper from a block of Springhill Cheese Company raw white cheddar.
• 1 wrapper from a block of Loleta Cheese Company organic sharp white cheddar.
• 1 plastic cork from a bottle of Boissonneau Chateau Moulin de Ferrand Bordeaux Blanc ^[2]. I have 4 bottles left. Once they’re gone, I’ll try to find only bottles with natural cork stoppers.
• A bit of plastic from around the stems of a bunch of fair-trade organic bananas.
• Shrink wrap from around a MultiPure water filter ^[3] cartridge and plastic Ziploc bag of parts.

  Actually, there was more plastic than these two pieces, but I sent it back to the company with a note. The story is that I purchased the MultiPure filter kit in order to save plastic and also because, unlike Brita, these cartridges filter out the chloramine that is used to purify our water here in the East Bay. I figured I’d save plastic because first, the filter cartridge only has to be changed once a year, as opposed to every 2 months, and second, the only plastic on the cartridge are the two endcaps, unlike Brita in which the entire housing is made of plastic and is disposable.

  Unfortunately, the filter and cartridge arrived encased in 20 square feet of fresh, new bubble wrap! I called MultiPure to find out if in the future the cartridges could be shipped without bubble wrap and was told that this was impossible. So I found out the contact info for the person in charge of making those decisions and mailed the bubble wrap back to her with a letter. I’ll post the response if and when I get one.

Well, that’s it. To bed!