by Beth Terry
Hi everybody. I’m home from Hawaii but sick again. Coughing. Fever. Chills. So this will be a quick one.
It’s all new plastic waste this week:
- Trader Joe’s toothpaste tube & cap. I wrote about buying this tube of toothpaste back in June. At the time, I thought I could make it last a year. It actually lasted 7 months. Not bad. I even cut it open to get out the last bits of minty goodness.
- Seal from around neck of organic peanut butter jar. Once this is used up, I’ll be bringing the jar back to Whole Foods and grinding my own peanut butter.
- Plastic wrappers from 3 birthday presents. Obama calendar, Obama DVD, and Slack Key Guitar CD. These were gifts from my family.
- 3 plastic envelope windows. Kaiser Permanente, Safeco Insurance, and Financial West Group.
- Plastic cover from Equity Funds prospectus. Isn’t it bad enough that my IRA is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking in this economy? I don’t need shrink wrap on top of that!
- Packing tape from delivery of new laptop battery. I’m always learning. Last week I learned that you’re not supposed to leave your laptop plugged in all the time if you don’t want to kill your battery. *Sigh* At least the box that came from Toshiba Direct was padded with brown paper rather than Styrofoam or plastic. And it also came with an address for mailing back the old battery to be recycled.
I started posting “Ask The Expert” Q&A articles on Sustainlane this week. My first article answers the question, “Is it ever safe to store food in plastic?” Check it out while it’s still there! My next article will be about what happens to our plastic recycling.
