My Plastic Free Year

Let me start this post with a disclaimer: the “i” key on my keyboard is not working well right now so there may be a few ridiculous typos in this post.

I am sorry it’s been so long since my last post. A lot has happened. I have been to a wedding, a funeral, a ski trip, Leah and I bought a house, COVID-19 has become a global pandemic which has upended the lives of most Americans.

There’s so much to talk about that I am not even going to try to do it all in this post. I will slowly catch up on everything through posts over the next week. It is hard not to start with COVID-19 though. There are so many questions and unknowns that it’s hard to know where to start. So, I will start with the most ridiculous one: toilet paper.

Leah and I are legitimately running out. We have 2 rolls left and are now both working from home full time for the foreseeable future. I make fun of Leah all the time for how much she uses so my guess is we will be good until the end of the week. For some reason, people have decided that if they are quarantined for 2-3 weeks, they will need a years supply of toilet paper. This is batshit crazy. It has now made it next to impossible for us to buy some and has led to a serious question about how to manage this in a plastic free life.

Normally, we buy the individually wrapped rolls of Scott’s which come wrapped in paper and that’s it. Almost every other toilet paper sold comes wrapped in plastic. If we are out and our only option is to buy plastic wrapped toilet paper, do we do it? For Leah’s sake, the answer will be yes. The long term answer to this is probably just to get a bidet to attach to the toilet. My brother’s girlfriend has one and swears by it.

As we looked at empty aisles in the grocery store as we attempted to stock up on food, we were at a loss for what to buy. We immediately got our usual, lots of fresh fruits and veggies. These are all perishable though. As we walked through the rest of the grocery store however, I just couldn’t bring myself to buy anything packaged in plastic. It literally defeated our entire reason for going. I told Leah that if we wanted any non-perishables, she was going to have to be the one to pick them out and put them in the cart. I think this entire endeavor has made her acutely aware of how much plastic is used and I could tell she felt really badly. She ended up only buying one frozen pizza.

Some of the fresh fruits and veggies we will be making meals with and freezing but there is still a large gap in our preparedness. We are just going to have to get creative in our cooking.

The other thing that I was surprised was totally gone was eggs. It makes sense as they tend to last a pretty long time but I think I really just wasn’t ready for what we walked into. We only have 5 eggs left so I may be learning to make pasta dough with just flour and water.

Look forward to some potentially ridiculous recipes in the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, I hope everyone stays safe and healthy.

So when I started this, I made a blanket statement that I was giving up all single use plastics. Over the course of this project however, there have been a few times when I have been surprised by receiving something from what I thought was a plastic free and sustainable company that appeared to be plastic. This happened again yesterday. I got my new toothpaste tablets and along with them, also purchased floss that is made out of silk as well as one other toothpaste that comes in a glass container but doesn’t have fluoride (figured I try this to compare with the Dent tabs).

This came with one refill which was wrapped in what appeared to be a clear plastic bag.

This infuriated me. If you can’t purchase what is specifically supposed to be a non-plastic alternative from a vendor called lifewithoutplastic.com, then how is this even feasible. I was getting ready to write an angry email when I started reading the packaging. Turns out this “plastic bag” is “compostable.”

This was something that I felt the need to dive into. After doing some research across a variety of websites, here are some main takeaways I have found:

1. Composting is hugely important. Every time we put food scraps into the garbage, they end up in landfills where the release methane under those conditions. Methane is about 30 times worse as a greenhouse gas than C02.
2. These “bioplastics” are largely made from cornstarch. While they do potentially allow for a good path forward to transition out of single use plastics, at some point, the amount of corn grown to support this won’t be sustainable and we will need to find non-plastic alternatives.
3. The comments section of a couple of articles on this discuss the merits of how much fossil fuel is needed to create these bioplastics vs. regular plastics. I haven’t had time to research this yet but am unconvinced that the manufacturing process of these compostable plastics is better for the environment that regular plastic.
4. While some of these bioplastics can be composted at home, the vast majority need to be composted at industrial facilities. It’s really difficult to determine how many of these industrial composting facilities there are near me, let alone in the U.S. but it seems to be a number that is on the order of about 200 across the entire country.
5. It is not easy to find these industrial composting facilities let alone get bioplastics to them. It took a lot of effort and after about an hour of internet searching, I found two facilities near me that may support this. I had to email these companies to learn more so still don’t have an answer.
6. If these bioplastics end up in landfills, they either will not break down under those conditions and last just as long as regular plastics or will break down into methane. Given the difficulty of finding a place to compost these plastics, the odds of them ending up in an industrial compost facility and not in a landfill or recycling center seem really low and therefore, will continue to contribute to the problem.

So where does that leave me? I think I need to do some more research into where I can properly dispose of these bioplastics before I feel comfortable knowing that they will end up being composted. If they are the only option for something that is irreplaceable, then I think it will be ok to use them. If not, I may try to avoid these as well as they are still contributing to a wasteful lifestyle that is unnecessary. This will probably be something that falls under the eye test for me. For now, this probably looks something like a yes to floss and a no to takeout containers.

The packaging on the floss box did lead me to one more sad discovery. It went out of its way to point out that it was printed with soy based inks.

Apparently toner is usually made up of finely ground polyester. This means that every time I get something printed, I am receiving a single use plastic. I need to pontificate on this another day because I haven’t figured out what, if anything, I can do about this yet. A problem for another day I guess.

So I spent a little time yesterday researching plastic free toothpaste options. There doesn’t seem to be any that are particularly easy. I wasn’t able to find toothpaste on Loop, although they do have mouthwash which is good to know. There are options in glass jars but these seem to all be fluoride free. I do tend to trust my dentist when she says fluoride is a good thing and would like that in any option I choose.

This led me to a new category of toothpaste, tablets. I had never heard of toothpaste tablets before but there do seem to be more than a few options out there. The general idea is you get a little tablet, chew it a bit to make it dissolve in your mouth to make the toothpaste, and then brush your teeth. There are plenty of options here with plastic free packaging but only a couple that have fluoride. After some more searching and reading of reviews, I decided to get DENT tabs.

The next problem I encountered is that these are not widely available. All of the options I found had significant shipping costs associated with except on amazon. So then the question became how do I have amazon ship these without plastic? It turns out, you can call amazon support and request reduced plastic in shipping. This is not going to have it go away completely, but will have them avoid adding in things like those plastic air pillows. I called them at 1 (888) 280-4331 and after a few minutes on the phone with them, was good to go. I am looking forward to seeing how well this works.

This is being shipped from Europe so I’m not expected to receive these to try until sometime in March. Looks like I am most likely going to be borrowing toothpaste from Leah until then.

I am running out of toothpaste and have no idea what I am going to do yet… shit.

I went back to Eastern Market today to pick up some cheese for Valentine’s Day tomorrow and some ground beef for a Skyline Chili cook off that I will be participating in this weekend. More on this to come but I fully expect to crush Leah even though she is from Cincy and grew up eating it.

It was definitely more difficult to make the trek down there than to just buy pre-packaged meat and cheese from the grocery store around the corner, but it was honestly nice to get out of the house. Despite the strong wind, I enjoyed the bike ride. Biking in February is way more pleasant these days now that it averages about 50°F every day.

Every time I go to the cheese shop in Eastern Market now, I let them know I am plastic free and they have been more and more accommodating. This time, the guy behind the counter commented how many more people were bringing their own beeswax wrap for the cheese as I had. It has apparently inspired the shop to buy cheese paper for their cheeses. This in turn inspired me to buy more cheese!

At the butcher’s shop, I asked for ground beef and handed him some tupperware I had brought. I learned an important trick. The butcher initially said that he needed to put the ground beef in a plastic bag so as to avoid weighing my container. I pushed a little bit and was able to have him zero his scale with my container on it before adding the beef to it. It’s pretty clear he was a little resentful of the extra work but was definitely willing to help me out.

I noticed a couple of things during this trip tonight.

1. I am getting more comfortable making requests of others to avoid single use plastics. I don’t feel sheepish about it or weird that I am showing up with a container of my own. I think a large part of this is due to the overwhelmingly positive feedback I tend to get from folks.
2. While the convenience factor of buying something in person isn’t the same as buying something online, I now feel much better about buying things from brick and mortar stores. When I buy something online, I agonize of trying to find the plastic free version of the item and it’s packaging and I still don’t know if that effort will pay off. The best way to describe it is that I am just a more relaxed person when buying things in at a store. It feels like it’s starting to become a habit, one which Leah does not love. Fortunately, as I’ve said before, she is really supportive and has no problem sending me to the grocery store by myself.

Leah and I got another order from Imperfect Foods today. We again forgot to choose what we wanted in our order and as a result, ended up with 3 of the items coming wrapped in plastic: spinach, brussel sprouts, and carrots.

The spinach and brussel sprouts were not surprising. However, we have gotten carrots from Imperfect Foods before and they always had come loose in the box. This was disappointing but also points to the inconsistency of delivery services. Unless I am there in person to choose what I am purchasing, I don’t feel confident that it will come plastic free.

This also got me reflecting. 42 days in, how much plastic have I used? Where have I made mistakes? Fortunately, I have it all documented:

1. Olive oil cap
2. Cling wrap on cheese
3. Plastic cup at a bar
4. Plastic seal on Loop containers for one order
5. Plastic wrap on tortilla wrap
6. Plastic container for tomato, brussel sprouts, carrots, and spinach from Imperfect Foods orders
7. Taco takeout lid
8. To-go beer 6-pack container (purchased for my brother)
9. Dog food bag (more on this tomorrow)

Nine pieces of plastic over 42 days is pretty good, and yet, still somewhat disheartening. I for sure would never have been able to even attempt to count that before, but I also want to do better than a piece of plastic every four days. I am clearly running into the most issues when trying something new. Hopefully I can keep getting better as my routine gets more and more stable.

On a separate note, I made some butternut squash soup tonight. It’s one of my favorites. Check out the recipe!

So it’s been a hot minute since I’ve had a chance to write anything so there is a lot to update. First, traveling plastic free.

This was actually relatively painless. I brought a metal coffee mug and a metal water bottle with me as well as a fork and a spoon in one of my silicon ziplock bags. This got me through breakfast and lunch every day at work pretty easily. I brought some leftover pasta to eat on the train ride up. The hardest part was not eating all of the snack in the office but fortunately I was in enough meetings that it wasn’t a real issue.

The place where I got really lucky was toiletries. I brought my usual set: toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant. I even planned ahead and brought shampoo. I did not, however, bring soap. Luckily, the hotel I stayed at had soap in a cardboard box.

I am pretty used to hotels that have soap in a thin, plastic bag and am going to have to get used to packing this as well.

The only other place I ran into plastic was actually at a brewery with a good friend of mine. We went to Other Half which is renowned for its beer. After tasting more than a few smaller pours while we were there, I have to say, it did not disappoint. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes beer.

The plastic problem came when we went to go. One of the reasons we went was because my brother asked me to bring him some beers back. Their to go beers are in cans with plastic tops that hold their beers together instead of the traditional cardboard box six pack container. When I saw this, I asked the woman working there if they would re-use the plastic tops if I gave them back. Apparently, they don’t work as well after they have been used and she said they would just throw them away. Because I promised my brother I’d bring him these beers back, I decided to begrudgingly buy them anyway. What I didn’t realize is that this is becoming quite a trend in craft beer.

A quick backstory before we continue. About 8 years ago, one of my roommates in Philly and I began brewing our own beer. We actually got pretty good at it by the time I moved to New York. There is a lot of equipment involved though so once I moved, I did not have space for it all in a small apartment. When Leah and I moved to D.C., I decide to start brewing again.

Tomorrow, I thought I would have a couple of friends over and brew a new beer and hang out. Brewing is largely a matter of spending a lot of time cleaning and sanitizing all of the equipment, and waiting around, preferably with friends. There are four basic ingredients in beer: malt, hops, water, and yeast. We went to a home brew store which sells all but the water, as the tap works just fine for that. I forgot that everything is sold in plastic. There was no getting around it. This is going on the irreplaceable plastics list. The replacement would probably be to just not brew my own beer and buy it, but how much plastic goes into a brewery making beer. This is a question I will return to later.

The other thing that I noticed at this store is that it sells a lot of craft beer. Somehow, about two thirds of it came not in a cardboard six pack container, but in the same plastic container Other Half uses that holds together cans. This was really disheartening. Usually, small businesses are better about these things but it makes sense if you think about it. These are small breweries that are already designing their cans. These plastic six pack holders are much cheaper than designing and printing cardboard six pack holders. Still, I wish they would just use a generic cardboard one if nothing else instead of the plastic.

The home brew store was across the river in Virginia. While there, we also stopped at a bulk grocery store called Mom’s Organic Grocery. We were there for a few items and Mom’s largely did not disappoint.

Most importantly, we were running dangerously low on dish soap and they had a bulk refill station. We filled up one of our mason jars which was a huge win. While there, we found a number of other amazing items. They had bulk extra virgin olive oil (I still need to find regular), bulk dried pasta, bulk bath soap, bulk laundry detergent (we didn’t need this right now but will definitely be returning for it), and bulk spices. We went for the spices first.

There were glass containers with cork tops we could purchase and fill with the spices which was perfect. The spice we needed most was ground cumin. The container (which is glass with a plastic lid) was empty. We asked someone if they had more in the back, which they did. They brought out a shopping cart full of plastic bags, each filled with a different spice. They then refilled the container in the front from this. This returns me to my previous question. If the items you are buying in bulk come to the store wrapped in single use plastic, are you living a truly plastic free life?

The answer is clearly no. But how much can anyone really know about the entire delivery chain of what they are purchasing? How reasonable is it to expect to know that? While disappointed, is this the best I can do when it comes to spices? How much is this true with everything else I am purchasing? I really don’t know. If I had my druthers, when buying in bulk, I’d like to be able to say that I don’t use plastic at all anywhere along the chain but I honestly just don’t believe that will be an option any time soon. This was a depressing realization. But I have to remember that I can only control so much and am pleased with my part in the overall chain. That’s what I am going to continue to focus on for the time being. In the meantime, I’ll just keep dreaming of this beautiful olive oil dispensing out of a metal container.

It’s been a bit of a busy weekend so I haven’t had too much time to post any updates. I am going to start by traveling back to Friday. I was working from home as usual but didn’t have any leftovers ready for lunch. All that was in the fridge were root vegetables which are delicious, but difficult to cook up a quick meal with while working. So, I decided to order out. There’s only a couple of places I typically order from that I know are plastic free: Hip City Veg and pizza. I had Hip City Veg the day before though and had plans to go to Emmy Squared that night and get a burger/pizza so didn’t have any known options. I took to google to find restaurants with eco-friendly packaging.

I found a vegetarian taco place called Chaia Tacos which is right up my ally. When the delivery arrived though, I found what is probably quite a common site, a compostable container that has a more traditional almost cardboard looking bottom and then a plastic looking top which is supposedly compostable too.

This got me doing a little thinking. It’s great if they use compostable materials but I know that the lid to this container is not something I could compost in my backyard. A quick internet search led me to some some information on these “plastic compostables” as well as biodegradable plastics. Here is an article describing the difference between from a company called PJP which seems to be a wholesaler. This article needs to be read with a grain of salt as they clearly skew towards biodegradable plastics. However, they leave out the fact that these biodegradables can leach out all sorts of chemicals still. What this article does call out well though is that compostable plastics need to be composted at industrial facilities. If not, they can take longer to break down than a normal plastic in a landfill.

This seems really problematic for a restaurant like this. I am sure they have composting trash cans in their restaurant for customers who eat in to drop these containers into but there is no way that customers who order delivery are going out of their way to make sure these make it to an industrial composting facility. Furthermore, for customers that are eating in the restaurant, disposable containers shouldn’t be necessary at all. There is no reason not to have reusable containers and silverware for customers eating in the restaurant. While I may feel better about making an exception to use compostable containers at a restaurant like in the future, I think I need to rule them out for delivery.

I also had my first foray into making tacos with homemade tortillas this weekend. I would say it went pretty well but was definitely not perfect. There is clearly a bit of an art to pressing the tortillas and then getting them onto the hot pan quickly enough to prevent the dough from constricting and thickening up. I made one of my favorite recipes though for a veggie taco which I will post next time I make it. I often cook without measuring things so I’ll need to take notes as I go next time. Plus, I need to perfect these tortillas before I put a recipe up for them!

This upcoming week should be interesting. It’s going to be my first week traveling up to NYC for work since this has started. Not sure what a plastic free life on the road looks like yet but I am expecting some new challenges. Until then, here is a good article from the NRDC on single use plastics.

So something really exciting happened tonight. I called my parents and was catching up when my mom started telling me about how she has started bringing re-usable utensils to lunch every day. She then started telling me about the salad container she bought. To top it off though, the really big win is that my dad is now bringing in a re-usable container to get his lunch in every day. This isn’t something I asked them to do, but instead something they decided to try after me telling them about my project. I was not expecting it and am super impressed with them. I know they are already slightly annoyed with all of the dish washing associated with it but it sounds like they are going to stick it out. Go Mom and Dad!

On another note, I made a risotto tonight that turned out really well. Putting the recipe up now! I’d highly suggest this, but mostly because risotto is the first meal I made for Leah. It made her stay with me after taking her to a mime show the date before. Yes, that’s right, I took her to a mime show on our third date and she still married me. If it can make up for that, it can work wonders for you too.

One of the things that has been the most challenging about going plastic free is the total lack of snack foods. Our options are seem so limited. We have nuts and got a few snacks through loop (wasabi peas, peach rings, and oyster crackers). While they are great, they aren’t really doing the trick.

There’s nothing quite like chips. To quote my friend, “they are delicious and unhealthy and their packaging gives me rage and I want some now.” So, last night, I decided to make some. It started easily enough. I sliced some potatoes and washed the starch off of them. All that was left to do was to fry them. This is where this process got tough. I didn’t have that much oil so I could only fry a handful at a time. This took about 5 minutes each but added up. Overall, I spent about 2 hours making chips. Don’t get me wrong, they are freaking delicious, but sometimes the juice isn’t worth the squeeze and this felt like one of those times. I also used the last of my canola oil and haven’t figured out where to get more without plastic. I think next time, I am going to try to bake them so I can do them all at one and don’t have to worry about the oil. They won’t be nearly as delicious/unhealthy but I think it will save a lot of time.

Tonight, we had a bit of an epiphany. We went out to dinner at a tex mex restaurant down the street. As we were leaving, we asked if we could buy some of their chips instead of having to make our own. They were so nice about it. They gave us a bag for free and said that we could stop by whenever and give them a few dollars for some more. It was so much easier than all the effort of making them. I am pretty excited to try this elsewhere as well. It’s nice to know how to make all of these things from scratch but the convenience factor is starting to seem preventative from making being plastic free sustainable from a lifestyle perspective. I’m looking forward to trying to figure out more arrangements like this moving forward.

Leah and I also got our first order from a new CSA called Imperfect Foods. The general idea behind it is that about 25% of produce gets thrown away because it doesn’t look good enough to be sold in a grocery store. For example, a carrot may be a little crooked. While the carrot is still totally fine, it just doesn’t look like someone expects it to when going to purchase it. This CSA gives these fruits and veggies a second life instead of letting them end up in a landfill.

Our order came and was great. We got a bunch and it all came loose in a box with minimal packaging which was really exciting. The one exception was cherry tomatoes which came in a plastic container. Fortunately, moving forward, we will be able to choose what we want and can avoid smaller items like cherry tomatoes and berries. We are looking forward to cooking something up with these.