Show Your Plastic Challenge: Week 12

TOTAL – 9.5 oz, 51 Items

This week we continued with all of the various changes that have been introduced over the past 3 months during the Show Your Plastic Challenge: Every Wednesday has become our milk delivery/pickup day, Thursday has become the day to bake our gluten free bread, Tuesday is the day that my weekly plastic free update is due to you. The process of educating ourselves continues along the journey.

Last week I delivered a few items to be dry-cleaned. Ugh! I know – chemical poisoning at it’s best. It’s something that I rarely do. But as we are learning to be content with less items, we have determined to take care of what we have decided to keep. In order to prevent the moths from getting the better of my husbands suits, it’s a necessary evil at this point. I included the dry cleaning bags in my count and picture last week. This week when I returned to deliver one more item for cleaning, we kindly returned the bag and asked that they reuse the same bag for our item this week. Fingers crossed, we’ll see what happens.

Today, the kids used the last drop of their sensitive skin bubble bath. It has been used very sparingly for the last year and now is a thing of the past. It’s something I doubt they’ll miss. Cups and other repurposed items quickly become a distraction during bath time. Our latest Personal Care Substitution was using olive oil for hair conditioner this week. I think that I was a bit too generous with the amount I used on the first try and will use less next time. HOW: Gently massage a ‘small’ amount of olive oil in hair before shampooing, leave in hair for a few minutes and then follow up with shampooing. It took two washes to remove the oily appearance but worked wonders! I think I will continue it weekly.

Here’s a list of what we consumed this week: Week 12

PLASTIC FREE PROGRESS

• Returned Dry Cleaning bag to dry cleaners for reuse this week.
• Week 8 of obtaining milk in glass jars locally.
• Began using Olive Oil as conditioner.
• Kids and I went on a walk to collect recyclable and non-recyclable refuse that was irresponsibly disposed of on the side of the road. Collected 2 glass bottles, 1 plastic bottle, 25 aluminum cans, other items.

• Begin making substitute for dish soap.
• Continue the next 10 items in the Personal Care Substitution worksheet from Beth Terry’s book Plastic Free – How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too.
• Make homemade toothpaste.

Have you given thought to one plastic thing you could do without this week?