The good (computer, camera), the bad (storage containers), and the ugly (plastic bags)Photo: Mike SanClementsIt’s the end of my two-week plastic purge, and here’s what I’ve learned: Plastic is, indeed, freaking everywhere. Even hiding in things like the lining of your seemingly cardboard milk container. And you can’t see it until you dive into an exercise like this, where you’re actually looking for it. I hope that I was communicative enough, as your official Grist guinea pig, that the people who have read my posts (many thanks!) are a little more aware now as well.

My girlfriend and I both lost weight. Weird, right? Turns out that skipping plastic is like a diet. How about that? The No Plastic Diet. I am declaring this my idea here and now. The book’s in the works.

Likely it’s because our shopping shifted from trying to do things the same old way, minus plastic, to completely changing our purchasing and dietary habits. We still haven’t bought more cheese. Or milk. Lunch has been hummus, baguette, and cucumbers. Breakfast is now a banana and cup of coffee. For dinner, we have been buying the ingredients for each night’s meal that same day. We have been making simple meals — things like grilled chicken, risotto, and salad. It lasts a couple days and is yummy. (Thanks for the food storage tips, everybody!) Would this be the same if we didn’t have an organic market two blocks from out house? Don’t know.

Frequent shopping means less plastic in the fridge.Photo: Mike SanClementsBack to the big picture. In America today, it would be nearly impossible to avoid plastic entirely unless maybe you were homesteading in Alaska. Even then, I think you’d be hard pressed.

I think that we can divide plastic into three categories — the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good is your phone, camera, computer, medical equipment, ski bindings, etc. These things last a long time and using plastic makes possible, or greatly improves, their performance. Backpacking with a canvas tent? I’m cool with nylon, thanks.

The bad is stuff like plastic food storage containers. It gets reused over and over but while you are using it, who knows whether or not it’s leaching nasty chemicals into your food? It’s nice to know that in some instances, like water bottles, BPA-free plastics are now available for purchase.

The ugly is what I call lazy plastic — single-use plastic that’s easily avoidable with almost no effort required to find a substitute. Plastic grocery bags are the king of ugly plastic. There is never a need to get a plastic grocery bag at the store. They should be banned. You can bring your bags and you can also bring your own bags for produce. It’s easy!

So will I use less plastic going forward? You bet! And truly, there are so many places to easily cut plastic consumption from our lives. And it could get even easier, if we as consumers begin to demand a reduction in plastic packaging.

Thanks again for reading everyone! Now, fork over some money to Grist.

Et tu, running gear?Mike SanClementsOn Saturday, we had plans to head up to the mountains and go for a long trail run. So I went to the closet and grabbed my Camelbak. Well, look at that — it’s a giant plastic bladder for water.  

I went back to the closet to get my running shoes and I started looking at all the stuff in there: skis, tents, jackets, bike helmets, ski helmets, etc.  A lot of that stuff is plastic or has plastic pieces. I wondered whether nylon is a type of plastic. Googled it. It is.

So all the gear that lets me do the hobbies I love contains plastic, right down to my running shoes. Well, I wasn’t gonna let that ruin my day, so off I went to the mountains.

First, a quick stop at the store to get some of the energy bars that we all use and are all packaged in … plastic. Damn it. Not the end of the world. I walked around the store looking at my options — fruit, bulk granola, bakery cookies, and bagels. All fine, but still a bit bulkier and heavier than a Clif Bar. I opted for two cookies and a bagel.

While I was running, I thought a lot about the alternatives for the use of plastic in outdoor sports. Maybe there aren’t that many. You can use aluminum bottles for water, but you wouldn’t want to go for a two-hour trail run carrying a backpack full of them.  Mountainsmith, a Colorado company, makes some of their backpacks from 100 percent recycled fabrics. I have one and it’s every bit as good as any other pack I’ve owned. So let’s hope for more of that in the future. 

More beer, no plastic. Awesome.Mike SanClementsAlso, plastic bags are essential on backpacking trips for both food and waste. We often try and reuse other bags when we’re camping, but I can’t really think of good alternatives to a plastic Ziploc. I would really love to hear other people’s tips and tricks on this one.

Boy, did I miss my energy bars. The cookies made me feel a little ill and the bagel was way too dry to eat in the middle of a long run.

In the end, it was still an awesome day and after a great day of exercise, who doesn’t want a cold beer?  I stopped at the store to get a six-pack of Dale’s Pale Ale. But because of the plastic loop I had to buy a 12-pack instead. Sometimes you get rewarded for avoiding plastics!

We all love a happy ending. How about sharing the happiness with Grist? Make a donation today!

I mentioned my dog, Hank, when I wrote about my epic two-hour trip to the grocery store. Anyone who has a dog probably read that and knew right away about a major source of plastic waste in my life — poo bags.Hank loves the planet, too.Photo: Mike SanClements

 I did a quick Google search and found that there are about 77 million pet dogs in the United States. So, let’s see … 77 million times two or three poops a day … well, you can just imagine the staggering number of plastic bags that wind up in our landfills due to pet waste.  

This is a time when paper bags can’t come to the rescue. Realistically, I think picking up dog poo with paper bags would just be too gross. But that doesn’t mean we have to use nonbiodegradable materials which will hang around forever. So on Friday after work I set out to find other options. Also, I wanted to find treats that don’t have plastic packaging. Because who could deny Hank his treats? Look at that face!

Dog treats — no plastic required.Photo: Mike SanClementsI started by heading over to Petco because I figured this was a place that lots of people have access to in their towns. Check it out! A doggy treat salad bar! So, Petco delivered on the treats without plastic wrapping. They provided plastic bags but had no problem with me using one of our cloth grocery bags from home. Hank can now have treats again!

However, Petco failed to deliver in the more eco-friendly poo bag options. None of their plastic bags appeared to be biodegradable and the plastic bags were all packaged in — yep, you got it — plastic bags.

Too bad. So I hopped back on my bike and rode over to Whole Pets to see what options they had. What I found was that Whole Pets came through in both areas. They had baskets full of unwrapped bones and treats, plus they also sold pet waste bags made from biodegradable cornstarch. Is this an ideal solution? I don’t know. But it’s better than millions of plastic bags being pitched into the trash each year. Poop all you want, Hank! Photo: Mike SanClements

My conclusion: Eliminating unnecessary plastic from Hank’s life was pretty simple. Which is nice, considering how difficult it was to eliminate it from MY life. Even if you don’t have access to a place like Whole Pets, I’m sure you could order the biodegradable bags online or ask your local pet store to carry them. 

So go ahead and purge your pup’s life of plastic. It’s easy! 

Tell me how you handle plastic problems for your pet. And support my dare by donating to Grist!

Fine. I’ll just make my own tortillas. Mike SanClementsThings are a little easier now that I’m over the initial shock of a big grocery shopping expedition. But it’s still a challenge. 

I love to cook and we frequently make Mexican food for dinner, so I figured I’d try my hand at tortillas. (The premade kind come packaged in plastic.) I looked up a recipe and the first few that popped up required baking powder. We’re out of that. So, I walked over to Ideal Market, a small local place in Boulder. Turns out you can’t get baking powder without a plastic lid. Damn. So I stood in the aisle Googling baking powder substitutes, which seemed surprisingly difficult to make. What is cream of tartar? So I kept Googling until I found a recipe without baking powder. My point being that once again, avoiding plastic was a major time suck.

The tortillas turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself, and making them was easy once I found the recipe. I will certainly be doing it again.

Plastic? Are you in there?Mike SanClementsOne other thing I’ve learned is that you really can’t store lettuce in cloth bags inside the fridge. The cloth acts like a sponge and sucks the water right out of the leaves, making it wilt super fast. Without plastic, we may need to shop more often because food just won’t keep quite as long. Suggestions, anyone?

The homemade hummus we made also turned out well. I put it in an old salsa jar and brought it to work with some leftover tortillas and cheese for lunch.

Now this I understand.Mike SanClementsThe comments from readers have confirmed one thing that I am constantly noticing now: There is a ton of food packaging where I can’t tell if it’s plastic, even if I study the label.  

Does my milk container have plastic in it? I dunno. I found myself looking inside it and wondering what the hell it was made of. Psst plastic, hey, are you in there? That isn’t cool! Why can’t all packaging be clearly identified, like the compostable bag I use for coffee? (Nicely done, Allegro Coffee Company of Thornton, Colo.!)

Keep the comments coming, and donate to Grist in support of my dare!

Two hours of work for plastic-free groceries.Photo: Mike SanClementsNormally, grocery shopping isn’t a challenging task. This time, following my plastic purge dare, it took two hours. Two whole hours! Just to buy five days’ worth of food. WTF?

The hold-ups came at every turn. This was way more difficult than anticipated. I figured I’d buy meat from the butcher, get cheese from the deli, put my veggies in cloth or paper bags, and call it good. But that ain’t the case. For example, we wanted some hummus, but the prepared kind is all packaged in plastic. Fine, we can make it from scratch, but then we had to go find all those ingredients without plastic.

Basically, everything becomes a massive pain in the ass. Speaking of which, let me tell you about toilet paper. In order to avoid plastic, you can only buy the single roll of Seventh Generation toilet paper at nearly $1.50 a pop. That never even crossed my mind.

Plastic-wrapped toilet paper: A pain in the ass.Photo: Mike SanClementsProduce was pretty easy, aside from berries. My girlfriend, Mary, and I purchased five reusable cloth bags and also used paper bags instead of plastic. I’ll have to buy more cloth bags in the future, but they were kind of expensive and I was already worried about how this would affect the grocery bill.

Cheese was trickier than I thought. The Whole Foods in Boulder tends to precut and wrap all their cheeses in plastic, except the sandwich cheeses like American and cheddar. Even with those, you have to plan ahead and bring something for them to wrap it in after they cut it for you. Otherwise, they’ll use plastic. So back across the store I went to grab a paper bag from the fruit section. We also needed parmigiana, so we had to beg the deli people to get some from the back of the store, cut it, and place it in a paper bag. (Which they did. Thanks!)

I couldn’t get any half and half or light cream for my coffee because all the creamer options have that stupid plastic cap on top of the carton. So I guess I’ll have milk in my coffee this week. I don’t like that. Crap. Very few juices are available in glass, other than the small sizes, and juice cartons tend to have that plastic cap, too. Sorry, Hank. No bone for you.Photo: Mike SanClements

Things like tortilla chips were also a no go for the most part, but fortunately Boulder has a local company that produces some in paper. Stay tuned for the making of the tortillas.

I had one accidental failure: I bought raisins for my bulk cereal but the box turned out to have a plastic liner. I think everything in a box has a plastic liner, but you can’t check. We placed them in the back of the cabinet and I will be eating my cornflakes without them.

So, after just one day with this dare, I’ve concluded that our food industry uses an enormous amount of completely unnecessary plastic packaging. And my poor dog, Hank, won’t be getting his nightly after-dinner Good Buddy bone, because they come in a plastic bag. So sad.

Don’t hold the raisins against me! Donate to Grist in support of my dare.

For two weeks, starting July 5, I am going to eliminate as much plastic as possible from my life. I will not purchase anything packed in or containing plastic. I will not eat any foods packaged in plastic. I will not use hygiene products packaged in plastic (except this recycled plastic toothbrush I already have, as no toothbrush would just be nasty), nor will I create any plastic waste.

fhemerick via flickrPlastic is an interesting material because it is both amazing and horrible. Think about all the great things made from plastic — the computer I’m typing on, our phones, medical and scientific equipment. I don’t think wooden cell phones would work so well.  

At the same time, we use far too much plastic and the environmental and health effects are terrible. Plastic is made from fossil fuels so it’s energy-intensive to produce. It doesn’t go away when you put it in the trash and when you recycle it, it doesn’t get used over and over and over again like aluminum.

Plastic is freaking everywhere. While cooking dinner the other night, all I could think was that grocery shopping is gonna be tricky. I’ll bring my own bags for produce — that’s easy enough. But I don’t think it will be possible to get tortillas. Even canned food is lined with plastic. And pasta will be tough because those boxes tend to have clear plastic windows in them.

Generally speaking I think I try to be pretty green. I ride my bike, walk, or take the bus to work nearly every day. We rarely drive and when we do it’s in a fuel-efficient Honda Civic. We live in a small apartment, have no air conditioner, no TV, no dryer (just a washing machine), and we eat nearly all organic foods.

But this dare is really gonna test me. Help a guy out — sponsor me! Donate to Grist in support of my dare. I don’t wanna let my peeps down.