Talking Trash

Being a consumer-mug carrying kind of gal, I really didn’t see the challenge in today, the "reduce trash" day…until I started counting the empty wrappers I leave behind in the wake of every meal.

Breakfast—simple corn flakes and milk—was served up in three different disposable packages. Of the cereal box, cereal bag, and milk carton, I would reuse or recycle most everything. But a better approach would be to avoid the extra packaging altogether by buying cereal in bulk with my own reusable plastic container.

Lunch—carrot and hummus starter, soup and salad—was shamefully worse. All in all, the meal came in a total of five plastic bags, two plastic containers and one glass jar, with a breakdown like this:

5 plastic bags, including:
1 bag of carrots
3 bags package the soup ingredients (noodles, spices, and oils)
1 bag of spinach

2 plastic containers, including:
1 round container of hummus
1 box of grape tomatoes

1 glass jar of olives

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Shameless Defense of the Family Name



Having tarnished my family name with these trashy confessions, I can offer one thing in my family’s defense. Friends, I offer...my sister. Every birthday and Christmas, my sister is the reason we don’t have more balled up gift paper strewn about the house. Check out her family-name-redeeming (and re-usable, environmental) gift-wrapping goods at www.ecoshikis.com

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By dinnertime, I repented and ate leftover carrot soup (pureed veggies from the garden in a recycled Mason jar) and toast (…+1 plastic bag of bread).

Sigh. The lessons here are evident. I will use the rest of the week to see if I absorb them into practice.