Location:Oakland, California, United States

Name: Beth Terry

Week: 30

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!)

bags, bottles, cups, straws, take-out containers, the usual suspects…

Total items collected: 9

Total weight: 1.2 oz

Items: Recyclable
1) Plastic wine cork. Read below for a solution.

Items: Nonrecyclable
2) Packing tape from 1 case of Plastic-Free books. (See explanation below.)

3) Packing tape from 1 box Plastic-Free promo books.

4-5) 2 bubble wrap sleeves. Ordered an Intuit credit card swiper for my mobile phone, so I can accept credit cards when selling my books. And yes, the swiper itself is plastic too. Ironic that to spread the information about plastic-free living as far as possible, I end up buying some plastic.

6) Packing tape from a case of Seventh Generation plastic-free toilet paper shipped via Amazon.

7-9) 3 plastic envelope windows.

What items can I easily replace with plastic free or less plastic alternatives?
1) Wine cork. This was a bottle of Kendell Jackson chardonnay (not a wine I would normally buy, but desperate times call for desperate measures) and I actually did check CorkWatch to find out what kind of cork it had:

/2012/03/cant-tell-whether-a-wine-bottle-has-a-plastic-cork-or-real-cork-theres-an-app-for-that/

However, the CorkWatch database listed a chardonnay with a plastic cork and one with a natural cork. The wine I bought didn’t fit the name of either of the listed bottles, so I had to guess. And I guessed wrong.

What items are essential and seem to have no plastic-free alternative?

Plastic tape from case of Plastic-Free books. The plastic packing tape does not have an alternative, unfortunately, because the books have all already been packed up by the printer, so that horse has already left the barn. If we do a second printing, I will request plastic-free tape, but for the rest of this year, as long as I sell books, I am going to have plastic packaging tape in my tallies. *Sigh* Read more here:

/2012/05/compost-this-book-but-first-check-out-how-cool-it-is/