I actually found it so hard to keep up with my 30-40 pieces of plastic, that I am skipping a few weeks and trying to implement some lifestyle changes before coming back to the challenge. Whew.

Your beach plastic video blog looks really neat. I’m gonna check that out.

I also realized since posting this that most of my plastic waste comes from things I buy on impulse. I do the bulk of my shopping at the Farmers Market, and its surprisingly easy to eat less junk food that way (I spend about $20 a week on berries) Its when I go to Safeway after work, which is in the middle of the night, that I end up with packaged junk food. Probably if I bought groceries before work instead of after I could cut it in half. I usually run there because I’m out of something and wind up with more than I need, which seems to only happen at night.

I subscribed to Freecycle a long time ago, but don’t seem to have the patience to use it. I seem to lack the craigslist/ebay/freecycle gene. I’ve picked up a lot of my appliances and furniture at thrift stores, though. I had been forgetting to buy power strips, which I wanted to use to make remembering to turn off my chargers easier, for so long that when I was at Ikea for something else I saw them and bought them even though they were in plastic.

Your prescription bottles can be recycled, but not the lids. They are #5 plastic, right? San Francisco takes those. And you can also take them to Whole Foods for the Preserve Gimme5 program, which I think is better than community recycling because they won’t get shipped to China.

When I needed power strips, I actually got them via Freecycle. It’s a great resource to check first before buying new stuff.

I’m glad you’re getting back on track!