Juice v. fruit: I love fresh fruit, but the thing juice gives me that fruit doesn’t is clean hands. It’s a bad habit to work through my meals, I know, but I can’t peel an orange while entering grades, and I CAN sip a bottle of juice. Once again, I’m noticing that lowering my dependence on plastic will require that I slow my life down a bit.

I love Etsy and will check out the conditioner bars – I had no idea that existed. In the meantime, you’ll still be seeing me report the disposal of conditioner bottles, not because I’m not open to change, but because I tend to buy a lot in bulk, and I’m sure I have more than a six month supply in my closet.

The refillable whiteboard markers are quite a coup! If the sales pitch is right about how they compare in writing life to conventional whiteboard markers is right, they’ll end up costing only half as much, reduce my landfill impact, and best of all (from my point of view) will allow me to stop making my students sick and/or high from the awful fumes markers make. I will buy a set of these with my next paycheck. Thank you very much for the idea!

There was a discussion on this blog a while back about fruit juice vs. eating whole fruit that you might find interesting. Check out the comments on this post:

http://myplasticfreelife.com/showyourplastic/2011/01/yaga-and-trev-week-1/

As for conditioners and lotions, here are a few plastic-free suggestions:

Organic Essence lotion in a compostable cardboard container:

http://myplasticfreelife.com/2009/12/plastic-free-organic-essence-lip-balm-body-cream-give-away/

Lush makes shampoo and conditioner bars. Here’s the conditioner: http://www.lushusa.com/shop/products/hair/conditioners/jungle

Basin also makes solid shampoo and conditioner. Here’s the conditioner: http://www.basinwhite.com/index.php?p=catalog&parent=48&pg=1

There are quite a few sellers on Etsy that make shampoo and conditioner bars. Just follow this searchfor conditioner bars:

http://www.etsy.com/search/handmade?q=%26quot%3Bconditioner+bar%26quot%3B

With all of the conditioner bar sellers, it’s a good idea to ask for no plastic packaging when placing an order. And check to see if they’ve used shrink wrap on them.

There are several toothbrush options.

Preserve is made from recycled plastic, and it comes in a prepaid mailer so you can send it back to the company for further recycling:

http://myplasticfreelife.com/2010/04/plastic-free-dental-floss-not-quite/

Soon I’m going to be reviewing a few other toothbrush options, including one made from bamboo and one made with boar bristles (NOT for vegans!).

I have seen some refillable white board markers, which I haven’t tried. The kit is full of plastic, but the markers are non-toxic, and it seems like it would save plastic in the long run.

http://shrsl.com/?~syg

(In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a BuyGreen.com affiliate, so if you follow that link and order something from the site, My Plastic-free Life gets credit for it.)