I failed to notice last week that another 6 months had gone by since the inception of Fake Plastic Fish. We’re just swimming right along here with no end in sight. Small victories are what we are after. Step by step, day by day, people waking up to their impact on the planet and what they can do about it. If we look too far ahead, we put ourselves in danger of either becoming overwhelmed by the immensity of the problem or lulled into complacency by promises that the earth will sort itself out one way or another. And yes, that’s true. The earth will be fine, no matter what we do. But life as we know it… that’s another story. And that’s what we work to protect moment by moment in the here and now.

Okay, enough philosophizing. Another week, another tally.

Plastic used up this week that was purchased before the plastic project began:

• 1 plastic Oral B dental floss container. Okay, I’ll say it. I don’t floss often enough. I should have added a dental floss container to the tally long before now, shouldn’t I? Perhaps I’ll add “twice daily flossing” to my New Year’s resolutions. Anyway, here’s one used container, and I’ve got two more that I’m working on before I switch to nearly plastic-free dental floss:

  Eco-Dent floss ^[1] is coated with 100% vegetable wax, and the container is made from paper-fiber. The floss inside is protected by a tiny plastic wrapper, which is significantly less plastic than that of a typical dental floss container. And yes, the floss itself is made from nylon, which is a type of plastic. However, I am not adding my used dental floss to my plastic tally. Just not. But hey, I’m not stopping anyone else from including used floss on their plastic-free blogs!

New plastic waste:

• 4 plastic envelope windows. Two from Safeco Insurance Company (I called today and found out that while they don’t currently offer paperless billing, Safeco plans to go paper-free within the next 6 months) and two from Chase credit card company containing my new credit card and paper statements from the old card that was cancelled due to fraud. Crazy that I signed up for paperless statements, yet when my account was closed, I no longer had access to the online statements. Hmm… seems like they need to come up with a way to allow folks to access their records securely online even after the account is closed. Otherwise, paperless isn’t really paperless in the long run.
• 1 cancelled Chase VISA card. Someone tried to order a buttload of stuff from cheapandeasydeals.com (or something like that) using my credit card number. Bad! Bad! Thankfully, Chase denied the charge and called me right away. Good! Good! (And no, I don’t think it was me shopping in my sleep, but you never know.)
• 1 small plastic baggie from a gift at work. My employer gave out little stocking stuffers inside cardboard poppers. Mine was a metal shoe horn (which I actually needed) inside a plastic baggie.

So, that’s it for last week. And now I’m hungry. Off to bake a potato. Mmmmmmm!