Comments on: No Impact Man Ch 6 – 8: Plastic-Free Cheese, Saving Money, Living in the Dark

By: I hate to bore you… | Recycle Your Day

I hate to bore you… | Recycle Your Day — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:08:28 +0000

[...] now; know that I LOVE to make recipes from “scratch”. Meaning, no funky boxes, cans, or processed packaged etc. We’re talking the real deal, baby… made with TLC just like grandmother did it. No [...]

By: Beany

Beany — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:45:25 +0000

Beth: I want to tell you that I finally bought plastic free cheese. It is from Europe (Italy I think) from happy cows and wrapped in wax. It was gigantic hunk of cheese. And since I bought the entire damn thing I got 10% off in discount. So it pays off twice. The cheese guy wanted to still wrap it in something and I had to insist that the wax was plenty of covering.

I came into sustainability via personal finance. It is an obsession I have, thinking about money. The intersection between money, the planet and our own happiness is something many people encounter in some form or the other. For me I began cooking from scratch to save money (it wasn’t for the midway island birds or anything else). Then once I began cooking from scratch my palate became refined and I began seeking better quality raw ingredients, stumbled upon Pollan’s writings and wham! I turned into a locavore. I am not 100% locavore, but I eat very ethically – fair trade, organic and so on. Aside from coffee and chocolate I do eat all meals in season.

A few months ago, your last question would have had me answering “no”. But now…I have started a seemingly insurmountable task.I want the entire city of San Diego to be car-free. And I have complete confidence because by the time I reach the end of my lifetime, that will be the reality. But I’d like people to transition voluntarily. So I have no worries about detractors and so on. :)

Benefits from eating locally….I realize how my money impacts my economy in a very real way. Even when I buy non food items I make sure it is manufactured in the US. I don’t want the country I’ve made my home to go down the toilet. I would like the guy in Ohio who made my utensils to be employed and happy.
.-= Beany´s last blog ..A family that rides together…. =-.

By: Marisa

Marisa — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 12:32:16 +0000

When I lived in the UK, I used to buy cheese from a vendor at the farmers market that brings almost everything uncut. I’d just put the cheese in my own container. I did that dozens of times and never had any problems.

I’ve spoken with one of the cheese vendors at my farmers market in Washington DC. They bring everything pre-cut and wrapped in plastic. He said that it is logistically unfeasible to cut the cheese on site because the market gets very busy. He didn’t mention anything regarding contamination.

By: Kyce at Old Recipe

Kyce at Old Recipe — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:42:17 +0000

On the question of gender: It was my husband that first had the idea of going plastic free. It seemed impossible to me at first, but the momentum carried us into our new life. We’ve been figuring out how to do this for several months now, cutting back and learning to provide for ourselves. On Jan first we begin our vow to buy no new plastic. Because almost all of our plastic use is linked to food, it’s been up to me (the housewife) to figure out how to cook whole foods, make yogurt and bread and all the other things we now eat. My husband does milk goats once a week at a local milking co-op, which is a huge help.

We joined a CSA, and have been loving it even in the depths of winter. They do use a fair amount of plastic bags to divvy up the food, but we are talking to them about going back to just bringing in boxes of food for individuals to separate.

In response to the Xmas tree question, in the West it’s very green to get a permit from the forest service to cut a small tree, reducing the density of overgrown forests. I couldn’t post this to the discussion for some reason, but wanted to chime in. On my blog I also shared our solution: A hanging wreath of evergreen branches we cut ourselves and decorated like a mobile. Pictures at http://oldrecipe.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/537/

Cheers, Kyce
.-= Kyce at Old Recipe´s last blog ..Quiet Days of Simple Splendor =-.

By: Clif

Clif — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:29:11 +0000

I wonder if doing the right thing or being oblivious is better.

As we all should know, fisheries are in dire straits because of overfishing. I found a nice recipe for Halibut and went to the store to get some. Only frozen was available and it was $15 a pound on sale. I was happy to see it because finally the cost of overfishing is hitting home. It astounds me that the price of tuna remains so low.

Prices go up and people stop buying regardless of their attitude toward the environment. Doing the right thing by not buying things that are directly or indirectly bad for the environment does not help to drive up their prices.

Kiwi fruit is available regularly here for $1 a pair. I’ve been watching the labels and they change from New Zealand to Italy to wherever the crop is coming in, always somewhere far from here, yet it is cheap. That is only because oil is cheap and that will eventually change.

Plastic is a different matter because no matter how much we use, it will always be cheap to make. Low prices can so easily overcome reservations about a purchase.

My point is that good intentions can only go so far and they do not cause prices to rise. Price increases have a huge impact. So maybe this is a rationalization for “enjoy it while you can”?

By: Tracey

Tracey — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:57:43 +0000

A while back I came across an old photo of a child processing food of some sort with a wood stove in the background. The caption told me that he was stringing up green for drying on a rack like a clothes dryer, behind him in the photo. It had never occurred to me that people dried greens for the winter. But I dry leeks, and celery tops, and all kinds of teas, so why not arugula, or kale?
Now, I rely on frozen vegetables (some from my garden, some from my coop) a lot in the winter, plus squashes and other produce that keeps well like potatoes, onions, carrots and parsnips. But if I had to give up electricity… hmm…

When I was a kid and we were too poor to make our fridge work – I forget why, maybe electricity, or it was broken – I kept a breadbox full of food out on a plank outside the kitchen window.

I want to start a community free school called Old School where we can teach and learn to preserve our local foods, package without plastic, live well with less that we love all the more for it.

BTW, if you want to make your own shampoo, here I am making it on Global TV on the 6 o’clock news: http://www.globaltoronto.com/home+holidays/2298810/story.html Handmade Gift video…

Cheese, as I know from my food coop, can get contaminated very easily. Cheese cutting equipment must stay very clean, and handlers must also be very clean. We would like to think anyone serving food it as clean as need be for cheese. I can see how producers would be afraid to not enclose everything in plastic. Consumers blame producers if the food goes off, food is discarded past best before dates and stores must take returns on items that are spoiled. I bet that 9 out of 10 cases of spoilage are from improper handling. When I dispense body products I have made into the client’s own container, my guarantee of shelf life ends there, because I don’t know how they’ve cleaned the container.

What I am saying is that we as a society need to become re-educated about how to live – re-informed about how people used to do it.
.-= Tracey´s last blog ..Natural Baking Soda for Health? What do you think? =-.

By: asrai

asrai — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:01:50 +0000

If I bought only local grown foods right now (-40 C for the better part of 2 weeks here in Mid-western Canada) I’d eat … maybe some red/green/yellow peppers, yougurt and cheese. Not even any hardy winter crops are done locally. There is no farmer’s market in the winter. And I have little interest in doing enough to sustain food even part of the year (my mom does and feeds us her extras which isVERY nice).

I do what I can. Taking my own bags, using cloth produce bags, buying less- in order to reduce waste. But sometimes, when I”m at the store, I feel like i am alone in the fight.
.-= asrai´s last blog ..Why I “self-published” =-.

By: Lacey

Lacey — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:00:54 +0000

I went to home depot last weekend and brought home 4 cans of paint on the metro, does that count as an insurmountable task? :-) Actually, it was one of the rare occasions that made me think car ownership might be a good idea - until I thought about it and realized I actually just needed to plan better. Bring a sturdy bag to carry the paint in (yea I know, no bag, I'm nuts) or a friend to help or use my Zipcar membership, instead of just hopping on the metro and going to buy paint. Really heavy paint. Oh from my attempts to eat more seasonally (if not necessarily locally) I found out how much I love butternut squash. Huge benefit. .-= Lacey´s last blog ..Holiday gift guides from The Kitchn =-.