Well, I actually ended my project a day early today. It had gotten to a point where I was just waiting for Friday to pick up a few things, but it was better for me to shop today. It seemed kind of silly to hold off, since I was going to buy these things regardless, and my end date was arbitrarily picked back in September to correspond to the rough end of my school semester (which is now over).   In the interest of integrity it might have been better to continue the project until the very end, but anyway, I’m calling this thing done now.

Over the last weekend when I *was* still doing it, I did buy a few things in plastic. I can’t remember now what they were. Oh, one was a chocolate bar that was (inside the outer package) wrapped in plastic instead of the foil I was expecting. And did I write about the parmesan cheese? I was out of time to shop and too far from the store (Santa Barbara Market) where they cut the wheels on demand, and will wrap the cheese in paper. 

Today was a whole different thing.  Buying yogurt (my starter had worn out, funny how it does that), blueberries (which happen to come in a very sturdy and re-useable ziplock, milk in plastic jug that I want to use for an ice pack… It just felt a bit strange. I did bring my own bags for bulk items and shopping bags, and I’ll continue to do that. I will generally continue many of the little habits I have developed, it just feels right to me to do so.  

So, my (this) project is over. A friend suggested that I have a tupperware party to mark the occasion!  I like this idea. But I probably (certainly) won’t.  No big celebration, release, or summation.  It’s just a thing tried, and done, nothing special.  The blogging part of it was interesting, and if you are reading this, your interest is much appreciated! And to those who left comments, thank you. 

I want to write some more about the pleasure and quality that results from making stuff ourselves from raw materials (which are rarely petroleum based).  Since it might be a while before I get to this writing, I wanted to mention now how inspired I was by a friend’s wonderful blog about her wool dyeing and knitting.  The blog is a good read, and Wow! does she make beautiful stuff: www.lefttwists.wordpress.com.  

I wanted to write about how hopeful I find small (seeming) developments like this: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/whitehorse-gets-machine-to-convert-plastic-into-oil-1.1287529.  Maybe my fantasy of plastic mining will really come true sometime.  Actually, I am almost sure it will – it is just a matter of time.  

Since I don’t have too much more to say than that, I will leave it at that.  But I’ll keep posting plastic-related thoughts here from time to time. 

So long for now, and Merry Christmas Every One!

I should be so lucky and so popular!

But still, I have it pretty good.  I just had to post that my dear cousin Richard, when he learned about my blog, hastened to tell me that I will be receiving a plastic Troll (not a Gnome, Rich?) for Christmas, because “every blog needs a troll!”

I do love my people. 

There may be more bugs out there eating plastic in the oceans than was previously thought: http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/11/13/3888603.htm

It was inevitable that bacteria and other microbes would eventually learn to make use of this abundant material, and it may be that they’ll save us from ourselves, or at least reduce the harm that plastic causes to other animal life, etc. Then again, maybe we won’t like some of the effects of a massive growth of these new forms of life.  We just don’t know.  But I always find it affirming, the ways that life adapts to changing circumstances. 

But it saddens me that I feel I can hear the Margaret Wentes of the world (Wente is a Canadian social commentator who writes for the Globe and Mail, and seem to enjoy saying things that she thinks are contrarian) laughing into their sleeve and going “I knew there was no real problem here…” — just as you hear that in reaction to evidence that earth’s resilient systems are not allowing the climate to warm as fast as the most scary models would predict.  People who react like that are missing the point.  My position: it is spiritually important to respond with caring and rapt attention to how our existence affects our beautiful planet, and the complex reactions of the planet are nourishment for even greater interest and caring.  

So my plastic project is in its last few weeks. Not much to report. Apparently my five year old nephew liked making his Papertoy space machines – can’t find a picture just now, but they are cute. 

Due to my lapses during my Transatlantic tour that I have been finding it harder to toe the line since I came back.

At times when I started this project, I rejoiced in reduced choices and having to find alternatives. Lately I have found these things more tiresome, and I’ve given up and bought something in plastic a couple of times:

– Two containers of Natto.  I accidentally ran out of Natto, when I had been intending to use the last bit as a starter for making some at home.  (I thought I had one more container in the freezer…)  I have come to consider Natto and its nutrients (especially Vitamin K2 – and if you haven’t heard of it, I recommend looking it up!  It’s an important nutrient for bone and heart health, and it tends to be very lacking in our diets for complex reasons) as important for my health. especially since I am not eating my usual cal-mag pills because I can’t buy THOSE except in plastic…and I don’t care to get my K2 from Goose Liver Pate (and now I can hear my grade three teacher talking about run-on sentences).  So I decided to buy another container of Natto as a starter.  And since I was buying one, I bought another one for a friend to whom I wanted to introduce this food.

– a wooden toy in a cardboard box that had small amounts of plastic on it.  I couldn’t find a toy that I thought my nephew would like that was totally without plastic.  And the company that makes the toy, Hape, is clearly trying to reduce plastic. So that was an excuse I gave myself.

– Lids!!  I bought the more expensive mineral spirits (for oil painting) because they come in a metal can instead of a plastic container. But they still have a plastic lid.  To mitigate things, (again, it’s an excuse and a rationalization, I know) I bought the largest jug available (a $50, gallon jug of mineral spirits!) with the idea that I would be saving the plastic lid or lids on the next container I would otherwise eventually buy (i.e. on those two or three small bottles that I would normally have bought instead).

The ubiquitous plastic lid… I have always remembered this one line from a Fringe play that I saw when I was in high school.  It was a mock Gothic Romance.  The main character was a woman living in a castle with the mysterious Mister Nod, who was clearly a Mr. Rochester knock-off, who turned up all over the castle when she wasn’t expecting him.  At one point she swooned in a kind of ecstasy while exclaiming about “the ubiquitous Mister Nod and his ubiquitous hands!”  Maybe it doesn’t sound so funny now, but at 14 I thought it was hilarious.  Anyway, I still always think of that when I hear the word “ubiquitous”.  Alas, I experience no ecstasy at the veritable ubiquity of Mister, Ms., and Junior Plastic and all their many cousins, turning up all over the planet where no one could ever have imagined they might ever wind up.

While I am (sort of) on the subject of 18th century novels, there is that great line from “Northanger Abbey”, when Catherine is walking along the beach at Bath hoping to run into Henry Tilney who is, however, not to be found.  Instead,  the beach is full of crowds of people “whom nobody cared about, and nobody wanted to see”!  I always thought that was a very funny line, too. And somehow it reminds me of all the unwanted plastic on beaches (if I really must personify plastic this way).

Well, so now it must be evident that I am somehow torn between being obsessed and being totally bored with this plastic thing.  Next post I will have some links to interesting articles written in THIS century, and I promise they won’t involve great conceits– you’ll be able to see clearly how they relate to my topic.

Partly because I am at art school, I think a lot about creativity.  It’s certainly not a new observation that limits and constraints often produce creativity, and I have been noting here some of the ways that my plastic-purchasing constraint has forced me to creatively adapt my habits, changing how I shop and what I eat.  It has often, also, made me literally create something from scratch – do it yourself – instead of buying it.  I thought that today I would mention a few of the odder inventions and ideas that have occurred to me recently due to the project.  

1. Smoked Yogurt.  Okay, I am not saying they are *good* ideas…. While making my fourth (!) batch of yogurt last night, I burned the milk. Just a little bit, and after pouring the milk out of the pan, it had no black flecks and just a faint burnt smell.  So I made the yogurt with it, and it’s fine– has just a faint, hard-to-identify scent.  It got me thinking about how the foods we eat came about from our hungry ancestors being reluctant to throw out any food, even if it had seemingly spoiled, and this is how so many great, weird foods were born (like cheese, presumably).  And odd smells, which at first may seem unappetizing, eventually can come to seem delectable, like in all those smoked foods (gouda…  paprika… bacon… salmon).  Might smoked yogurt have a future, and a purpose?  Smoked foods are also, often, salty.  So, I’m thinking: smoked, salted yogurt.  Smoked lassi.  You never know. I might be on to something truly new. 

2. Wood glue as an oil painting medium.  Now with this one, (or all of them, actually, except for smoked yogurt), I am not saying it’s *new*… but it is new to me.  I ran out of acrylic gesso, which is used to prime canvases or panels so that the oil in paint doesn’t eventually rot them.  I can’t buy more (it only comes in plastic) but I happen to have a huge container of wood glue on hand, so I tried that on some paper as a sealer/primer.  As it was sitting there, slowly drying, it occurred to me to find out what would happen if I painted right into the wet glue.  So I grabbed a glob of oil paint that was handy (cadmium red, what a yummy paint name) and tried it.  It looked really neat – in places almost like encaustic paint.  Very translucent and chewy at the same time.  I’ll see how long it takes to dry, and what happens to it, but it looks promising right now. 

3. Condensed milk ice cubes.  I’m not buying fresh milk because I can’t get it without plastic, but powdered milk in coffee is not that good. I thought of condensed milk, but I don’t know if I would go through it fast enough, particularly at my office, before it goes off.  So then I thought about freezing condensed milk in ice cube trays.  A cube should cool the coffee fast – which I like – and should be sweeter and creamier than powdered. I haven’t tried this yet, but I will.

4. Okara tacos.  Tried these tonight in an effort to use up my frozen okara from making soymilk. Verdict – very tasty taco filling, when cooked with onions and olive oil.  Recipe is almost ready for the vegetarian food carts.  

You could say these ideas are barely attributable to my low plastic thing – after all, burning the milk was not exactly a requirement of my plastic program – but none of them would have occurred without it. 

And I know they are not amazing.  But so many little seeds, just a few of the offspring of one silly little limit.  I like that fecundity. 

Phew, I am barely thinking about the plastic project these days.  It’s kind of weird to turn my mind to it again.  It’s mid-semester, and my work has picked up, there’s so much to do, … I am glad I got a few basic habits in place before it got like this.  Like the yogurt thing.  Other than that, it seems like I am just avoiding a few things that I would otherwise buy — so the program is saving me a little cash, working against a few impulse purchases. 

But as I think about it less, I also notice plastic less. So I unintentionally acquired some new plastic recently, and didn’t notice until later. There were some plastic cellophane squares underneath the pastries I bought at (the delightful) French Made Bakery, and I didn’t see those until they were pointed out to me by my sister-in-law.  And I bought a glass bottle at The Soap Dispensary last week which has a spray top – which is plastic.  And I didn’t even register this as plastic until just this evening, when using the bottle for the first time. 

So two more strikes against my rules there.

Beyond that, I’m definitely noticing the absurdity of my project.  Two examples: 1) if I buy an airline ticket, which I will probably be doing soon (indirectly, it is being bought on my behalf) how many items of plastic am I indirectly buying?  I am sure that every service, and every non-material purchase, has plastic parts.   Hairdresser, dentist, acupuncturist, landscape gardener, on and on and on… all purchasing plastic on my behalf.  (Thanks). And my business does the same for my clients.  (You are welcome).  2) Restaurant food.  Again, the plastic purchaser is just displaced.  

I’m not saying it’s not worthwhile to eliminate plastic at the individual consumer level, and if we get less used to having it in our personal space, I think that will have ripple effects into other, more bulk or industrial uses (because ‘we’ work there).  But still. It’s discouraging.  

Anyway, I remind myself that this project is not about my actual literal impact.  I am just feeding the collective learning, I hope.  And learning is fun.  That, at least, is really true. 

I finally made it up to the Soap Dispensary on Main Street– a store that works mostly by dispensing commonly used household products into your bottle/jar/container.  

The store smells great! (They also sell a lot of raw ingredients for making your own lotions, makeup, etc. and the nice-smelling oils and herbs to scent them). It is much smaller than it looks on the picture on their website.   It takes a little while to get your products, compared to the speed of grabbing stuff off the shelf. This was predictable, but I still felt a little bit impatient, even though I was not in a rush.  Funny, these “habits of hurry”. I think I have a lot of them. 

Prices were reasonable, comparable to the ‘natural’ products at any other store.  

I’m glad this store exists, but it feels very much like a boutique experience and a kind of a ‘treat’ store.  A place where you go when you have the luxury to shop slowly and possibly pay a little more.  So, it’s not really a solution yet– not at this scale.  

I wonder what it would take to make the idea scalable.  A Costco style Dispensary is what I have in mind.  I haven’t researched it at all, but I can see why retailers will run screaming from the idea until it becomes absolutely mainstream – no one would want to be the one sending customers away because they forgot their container.  And extra staff costs would be a concern.  But I suspect that a really big problem is contamination fear.  You sell something to a customer in their container, and then they come back and say it made them sick, or they had an allergic reaction, or it smells funny…  but you can’t vouch for the quality and cleanliness of their container.   Who would be responsible?  

Right now, it looks to me like a deposit system on all packaging might be more immediately doable than making everything available in bulk.  I have heard that the deposit system we have on beverage containers works very well, and I can easily believe this– I have observed that bottle seekers in East Van are amazing at turning up within moments of bottles being put out for collection. 

 In the meantime, refilling a dish soap bottle for the second time felt totally righteous.  (I mean that like, “totally righteous, dude” — not “Righteous” like I started to wish for all the sinners to be smote). I recommend seeking it out just as an experience.