No-Plastics October – Musings Week 3

Posted on October 22, 2019 by Joanna

I am definitely becoming hyper conscious about plastics. I bought a GAP shirt this week as the 50% off sale had a further 40% reduction. YES! I confess that normally I would have accepted their plastic bag (:( ) as I had wandered in perchance on a walk through town, but I refused and carried it home like that. With my no-plastics focus this month, I have noticed also a greater awareness of waste in general. I have always hated food waste and tried to repair rather than throw things away, but I am consciously looking for ways to improve on this. I was super lucky when I moved into my little apartment almost three years ago, spontaneously friends and colleagues gave me furniture and kitchenware they no longer used. Now this was wonderful for my limited budget, but doesn’t it make so much sense to share like this?

Instead of buying new glassware for storage, I am checking thrift stores and my apartments recycling bins, as well as using the bottles and jars I buy. I don’t think I am going to throw out my plastic storage containers quite yet but I am trying to increase other forms of storage. Of course, it is trial and error. I froze some soups in glass bottles in my freezer. I DID leave space at the top for expansion but while the wide-necked bottled fared fine, the narrow-neck cracked! Reasons to reduce plastic are of course not just for the animals and planet, but also our health. Plastics can contain toxins that can leach out and enter your body. A popular toxin in plastics is BPA; a chemical that mimics estrogen. Thanks to recent activism and greater public knowledge, BPA free plastics are becoming more the norm. But the question we need to then ask is what is BPA being replaced with. Even if BPA is not a concern in plastics, other toxins are still there. I have been using vinegar as a non-chemical cleanser this month, diluted with water. I have it in an old plastic spray bottle and need to find a glass one.

My food consumption has continued to be predominantly vegetarian and in-season due to the ease of buying the produce. It has also made me more creative in my cooking, which I love. When I buy beets wrapped in plastic from Trader Joe’s, of course their leaves are removed, not so from the market. A quick google, and I discovered they are more than edible, so I blanched them for a minute and sautéd them with garlic and onions and threw on some pine nuts and blue cheese for a very tasty lunch. I used a farm delivery service I used a couple of years back for some super tasty raw milk products. More costly but oh so creamy!

  • This week’s soup – leek and potato
  • Homemade goats cheese pizzas
  • Look at those beet leaves
  • cooked beet leaves
  • Farmer’s market haul
  • Raw milk products
  • Look at that cream!
  • Coconut water
  • Reducing plastic storage

This is a great video about freezing without plastic.

This week’s fail. With my milk, yogurt, eggs and cheese, I also bought some raw milk butter from the farm and didn’t check how it would be packaged. A plastic tub, I am afraid. But the taste is better than any store bought butter I have tasted.

On a positive note, awareness is definitely growing and I want to give a shout-out to a local Italian friend, Riccardo Befi, who for a hobby (he is a jeweler by trade), sells his homemade lasagna and buffalo mozzarella at Hastings (and other) farmer’s markets. This summer he changed to biodegradable containers and I am proud of his decision. And his “Lasagna Preziosa” is to die for.

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One Plastic Bag – Perfect Picture Book Friday

Posted on October 18, 2019 by Joanna

Title: One Plastic Bag

Authors: Isatou Ceesay and The Recycling Women of Gambia (and Miranda Paul)

Illustrator: Elizabeth Zunon

 Publisher: Milbrook Press, 2015

Ages: 4-8

Genre: Nonfiction

Themes: plastic scrap, environment, conservation, recycling, community, plastics, single-use plastics, sustainability, pollution, waste, getting involved, solutions, Gambia

Opening:

Njau, Gambia

Isatou walks with her chin frozen. Fat raindrops pelt her bare arms. Her face hides in the shadow of a palm-leaved basket, and her neck stings with every step.

Warm scents of burning wood and bubbling peanut stew drift past. Her village is close now. She lifts her nose to catch the smell.

Synopsis:

Plastic bags are cheap and easy to use. But what happens when a bag breaks or is no longer needed? In Njau, Gambia, people simply dropped the bags and went on their way. One plastic bag became two. Then ten. Then a hundred.

The bags accumulated in ugly heaps alongside roads. Water pooled in them, bringing mosquitoes and disease. Some bags were burned, leaving behind a terrible smell. Some were buried, but they strangled gardens. They killed livestock that tried to eat them. Something had to change.

Isatou Ceesay was that change. She found a way to recycle the bags and transform her community. This inspirational true story shows how one person’s actions really can make a difference in our world. (publisher)

Why I like this book:

One Plastic Bag has so many curriculum links. Through the language choice and illustrations, the reader is immersed ininto Isatou’s world and Gambian culture. The language is not only set in the Gambian context but it is lyrical and has a beautiful refrain variation: “One plastic bag becomes two. Then ten. Then a hundred.” and “first one, then two, then ten,” which makes kids want to chant along during a read-aloud. Also, the great story arc about one woman seeing the dire results of unsanitary random dumping of trash loaded with plastics around her village and took it upon herself to make a difference, one small plastic-woven coin purse at a time. 

The illustrations by Elizabeth Zunon are stunning, richly colorful and evocative of Gambia. She cleverly creates bright and warm collages from plastic bags, African patterned cloths, photographs, and painted surfaces. 

Activities/resources:

This is a great introduction to teaching about recycling plastic bags and introducing some really cool DIY activities. One Plastic Bag‘s website is packed with activities and information, including a PowerPoint about The Gambia and instructions for turning plastic bags into purses. 

As the timeline in the back matter shows, although this project started off small, eventually it made a huge difference in the lives of those in the area. Isatou was honored with a World of Difference 100 Award for her work. Including a glossary, a map, suggested additional reading, and an author’s note about the impact of the project is helpful to teachers and students interested in looking for ways to make a difference in their own corner of the world. Anyone reading this book will never look at a plastic bag in the same way again.

Each week a group of bloggers reviews picture books we feel would make great educational reads. To help teachers, caregivers and parents, we have included resources and/or activities with each of our reviews. A complete list of the thousands of books we have reviewed can be found sorted alphabetically and by topics, here on Susanna Leonard Hill’s website.

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No-Plastics October – Musings Week 2

Posted on October 15, 2019 by Joanna

Plastic reduction in my own little world has gone well this week. I have spent less than normal. In part because I am using up food wrapped in plastic in the freezer, but much because of truly making everything from scratch and predominantly vegetarian. My one fail this week is because I started dying my hair in August and I did buy a kit that contained three plastic bottles. I need to look where I can buy henna in different packaging. My one new eco purchase this week was laundry detergent. These strips have proven as effective as my previous detergent and not expensive at all, although a box of powder would work just as well too.

I love DIY and finding ways to reuse what I have to solve problems. As I mentioned last week, I have started to use baking soda to wash dishes with (by hand as I don’t have a dishwasher, and wanted to find a receptacle to keep the soda in by my sink. Tada, I found this old ceramic tea strainer one of 95% of my kitchenware which was gifted by friends and colleagues when I moved into my place three years ago. This works perfectly to sprinkle onto dishes and doesn’t go lumpy as I thought it might.

And here’s a bit of food porn from the farmer’s market and a couple of dishes this week.

  • Fall colors
  • Beets
  • Homemade butternut soup
  • cauliflower cheese
  • avocado toast
  • farmer’s market haul this week
  • This week’s iced tea – orange & mango
  • Peppermint this week

I love how empty my recycling bag has been these past two weeks, but recycling can only go so far. Even in rich countries, recycling rates are low. Globally, 18 % of all plastic is recycled. Europe manages 30 %, China 25%—the United States only 9%. Part of the solution is to use less disposable plastic in the first place. The “zero waste” movement, which dates to the mid-1990s, is gaining favor. Hundreds of communities worldwide are embracing it—including the downtrodden industrial town of Roubaix, France, where the success of a citizens’ campaign shows that zero waste is more than an affectation of wealthy liberals.

Does my not using plastic straws make any difference faced with the global problem? I think it can. As communities act to ban single-use plastics and individual consumers reduce their usage and raise concerns, bigger actors pay attention. On other issues, like overfishing or deforestation, we have seen that big companies like McDonalds and Walmart can be sensitive to the concerns of their customers. Those global companies can be important levers in driving change and shifting to a regenerative, circular economy. Our little part can cumulatively up the pressure on these companies.

Individuals and communities thus can and should reduce their plastic usage but nothing substantial will happen really until government legislates that manufacturers be responsible for their own byproducts, they don’t generally pay their fair share in tax either. There are rays of hope on local and national levels:

  • SEATTLE BECOMES FIRST U.S. CITY TO BAN PLASTIC STRAWS AND UTENSILS – July 1, 2018
  • STARBUCKS TO DITCH PLASTICS STRAWS by 2020
  • CALIFORNIA BANS TRAVEL-SIZE PLASTIC SHAMPOO BOTTLES FROM HOTELS – to take effect for large hotels in 2023
  • in 2016 FRANCE BECAME FIRST COUNTRY TO BAN DISPOSABLE PLATES AND CUPS – new French law will require all disposable tableware to be made from 50% biologically-sourced materials that can be composted at home by January of 2020. 
  • NORWAY RECOVERS 97% OF ITS PLASTIC BOTTLES – Its trick: deposits as high as 2.5 kroner (32 cents) and machines, found at most supermarkets, that ingest bottles and spit out refunds.

Bans go way beyond recycling and tackle the issues at the source, helping to curb greenhouse gases coming from the rapidly expanding petrochemical industry that uses fossil fuels to produce plastic. In all my reading on the subject, I am convinced by far the greatest change to reducing the global plastic pollution crisis is if governments implement sweeping national policies that restrict plastic use and hold manufacturers accountable for responsibly handling waste. In the USA, Congress must pass legislation that would hold corporations accountable for handling plastic waste at the end of its life.

We can support initiatives like the 2018 Save Our Seas Act, but I need to do much more research on how I can become involved in groups pressurizing the government for change. I hope more to come in my next post when I will look more at how plastic has become environmental enemy #1 in a very short time and why.

Here’s a link to week one’s musings.

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