Location:Oakland, California, United States

Name: Beth Terry

Week: 3

Personal Info:

I am the founder of MyPlasticfreeLife.com and have been collecting my plastic and attempting to live as plastic-free as possible since June of 2007.

See my previous years’ tallies at:
/category/beths-weeklymonthly-plastic-tallies/

List of plastic items REFUSED this week. (Yay!)

1) Plastic grocery/shopping bags — bring my own reusable bags wherever I go

2) Bread bag — bought unpackaged bread from Great Harvest and had them put it directly in my hemp produce bag.

3) Spinach bag — bought loose baby spinach from Market Hall in my own produce bag

4) Produce stickers — chose local produce without stickers

5) Sandwich wrapper — brought my Lunchbot container to sandwich shop

6) Coffee cups — made coffee at home all week.

Total items collected: 3

Total weight: .2 ounce

Items: Recyclable
1) Plastic milk bottle cap — apparently, Caps-n-Cups will accept all plastic caps to recycle no matter what kind of plastic. Or downcycle I should say. They get made into lots of different secondary products.

Items: Nonrecyclable
2-3) 2 plastic envelope windows from a tax statement and an environmental group. Need to get off their paper mailing list.

What items can I easily replace with plastic free or less plastic alternatives?
Get off mailing list of organization.

What items would I be willing to give up if a plastic free alternative doesn’t exist?
None.

What items are essential and seem to have no plastic-free alternative?
Just the tax statement.

What other conclusions, if any, can I draw?

I stayed at home all week working on my book manuscript and didn’t actually have much contact with the outside world, which is probably why my tally is so small this week. I’m going out of town for a week starting Saturday, and avoiding plastic may be more challenging.