Yikes! This photo reminds me of one of the plastic tallies from Fake Plastic Fish, The Early Days. So, in the interest of brevity and my own sanity, I’m going to group some items so the list doesn’t seem so long.

Plastic items used this week but purchased before the plastic project began:

• 2 AC Transit bus passes, finally used up. These are not the only plastic transit passes I’ve gone through. Oh no. BART tickets are made of plastic, and I use those all the time. It’s just that BART tickets get sucked back into the machine and the end of their lives, whereas AC Transit passes stay with you forever. (I’ve learned more about those plastic BART tickets, by the way, and writing about them is on my FPF To Do List.)
• 1 random piece of plastic found while cleaning. It broke off of something. We have no idea what.

New plastic purchased since the plastic project began and used this week:

• 1 big ass bag (34 lbs) of World’s Best Cat Litter. I’ve already discussed the various litters I’ve tried ^[1]. Haven’t had time to try making my own. But I did finally (today) send a letter to GPC Pet Products ^[2], the company that makes World’s Best Cat Litter. Will publish it in a separate post later this week.
• 3 plastic labels from jars of King’s Cupboard dessert sauces. These are the free sauces I wrote about 2 weeks ago ^[3]. I didn’t realize at the time that the labels were plastic. And I doubt I would have refused free fudge and caramel sauce if I had known. And I have to say that Friday, the espresso fudge sauce really came in handy after I gave up coffee and alcohol. I ate the whole jar in one day!

  I meant for it to be the last chocolate for a while. Another one of the crutches I use to avoid emotions. But today, I received a HUGE box in the mail from the Fudge Is My Life company ^[4]. Take a wild guess who sent that to me. Someone getting me back for all the chocolate bars I sent him ^[5]! More on that, and the packaging involved, later. For now, let me just pledge not to open any of these jars until next month.

• Plastic from new bike purchase: 4 plastic straps from my lock and basket, 1 plastic wrapper and 1 foam insert from the cell phone case that came with the bike. I was surprised that there was not more plastic packaging involved, but maybe the bike shop discarded it before selling the bike? And yes, there is plastic on the bike itself, although not much. And of course my helmet is made from plastic. But for the sake of my skull, I think I can live with it.
• Plastic baggie from a set of Red Cross refrigerator magnets. My Red Cross card came in the mail this weekend, along with some refrigerator “reminder” magnets. I don’t need them, but they are the least of my worries where the Red Cross is concerned ^[6].
• Plastic from new Penguin soda maker: 2 plastic shipping labels, 1 plastic box handle, 1 plastic CO2 cartridge wrapper. I was surprised this week with the gift of a Penguin soda maker. An employee from Soda Club, the company that distributes these machines, read about the Take Back The Filter ^[7] campaign and then my post on Fake Plastic Fish about the Penguin ^[8], and decided she wanted to send me one. And I’ve got to say that having fizzy water this weekend has been very, very helpful when I wanted to imbibe other, less benign things. I plan to write a whole lot more about this machine in a future post, so stay tuned.
• 1 plastic strip from around a can of frozen juice. I use a small spoonful of frozen, unsweetened juice to flavor my fizzy water instead of sugary syrups or other flavorings.
• A few pieces of scotch tape from some thrift store plates. The plates were held together as a group with the tape.
• 1 piece of plastic from a bunch of organic bananas.
• 1 plastic insert from my glass bottle of household cleaner, aka vodka. It’s gone. I’m switching back to vinegar, even though I don’t care for the smell, because vodka is just too dangerous to have in the house right now.

That’s it! It was a busy, busy week.

Thank you to everyone who left such supportive comments in response to my last post ^[9]. I was a little worried at first about writing it. It didn’t, after all, relate directly to plastic or environmental issues, and I wondered if I was turning Fake Plastic Fish into too much of a personal journal. But then I remembered what Robj98168 wrote ^[10] in response to my post, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger ^[11]. “I just blog on what interests me and damn those who don’t find me interesting!” Okay, maybe I wouldn’t put it that bluntly, but he inspired me to open up, and so for that, thanks Rob!