by Beth Terry
Another week during which I had zero plastic waste until the weekend. What is it about weekends? Here’s the tally. All items are new since the plastic project began:
- 1 inner liner from a bag of Natural Choice Indoor Kitten food. This was something we bought a while back when we were trying to figure out what to feed them. Decided to use up the last of it this week, since their tummy troubles are all better.
- 1 outer wrap from a box of Refresh Endura eye drops. This was the first week in a while that I’ve had eye problems bad enough to open a new box of drops.
- 1 Refresh Endura single use eyedrop container. Saturday morning was not a happy time.
- 1 plastic capsule from a bottle of Jepson Estate Bottled Mendocino Sauvignon Blanc (2005). In all the time since I’ve been tallying my plastic waste, this is the first wine I’ve opened with a plastic capsule (the wrapper around the neck that covers the cork.) All the others, as far as I know, have been tin. So I did a bunch of research and found out more than I ever wanted to know about wine capsules and what they are made from. More on this subject in its own separate post this week.
- 1 totally unnecessary plastic stir stick from a chocolate martini at Fuzio. Whatever possessed me to order a chocolate martini? It was as bad as it sounds. No, worse! Sickeningly sweet. This abomination should never have been invented. So now I know. I won’t have to wonder what a chocolate martini tastes like anymore. Hmmm… I wonder what it feels like to be whacked in the head with a bicycle pump…
- 1 plastic from a blister pack of metal gate hooks. We’re using these to keep kitties out of certain rooms…
…like the back laundry area where we store all sorts of enticing things… recycling, Beth’s plastic collection, shoes, a plastic bag full of yarn…. Michael had constructed a makeshift barrier of cardboard and wood to keep the kitties out of that area. This is what happened when they learned how to push their way through:
They tell us that it is yarn art and that we should praise, pet, and feed them for such powers of creativity. Instead, we rented a Zip Car and went to Urban Ore last weekend to buy a used bi-fold door and hinges to keep them in the kitchen and out of the back room. Urban Ore is an awesome place where old pieces of houses and buildings go to find new lives. The door we bought is 100% wood, unlike the vinyl doors offered at Home Depot these days, and actually matches the woodwork we already have. Michael did a great job hanging it.
How long do you think it will take the kitties to scratch a new piece of artwork into the door as they attempt to learn how the gate hook works? How long before they actually do learn to lift the hook and get out? We are taking bets.
