In Which I Rant About Plastic

I abhor plastic and try very hard to keep it out of my house and my life. Of course this is 2010 and well, plastic is EVERYWHERE!!! I bet if we looked around plastic is touching us 24 hrs a day. In some form or another plastic is always with us. Now, I am sure there are some instances where plastic is fabulous and necessary, like in a medical setting. Really! do we need all this plastic around all the time? Everything we buy is packed in it, practically everything we eat comes wrapped in it, our clothes contain it, our personals come in plastic, shampoo bottles, toothpaste containers, ect. Our bedding too, if your blankets are fleece, acrylic, or polyester, they too are basically plastic. It's all just so fake and junky. BUT, it's also cheap, which is why we keep buying more and more and more of it. Recently, I needed pillows for the little boys room. Target had decent polyfil pillows for $3.50 a piece, basically plastic pillows. They also had down and feather pillows for $29.00 a piece. Well, I don't know about you but I don't have $90 to spend on pillows! Now some would say, "Isn't it nice we have inexpensive alternatives?" Yes it is nice, but if we didn't have the plastic ones, the "real" ones wouldn't cost as much. Now the cheap pillows are just that, CHEAP they will not last long and when they are gross and smushed flat and after the we've given them to the dogs to lay on til there really nasty, then we will throw them away and they will sit in a landfill......FOREVER!! Yup all this plastic, poly-whatever doesn't bio-degrade, erode or otherwise leave our earth. Now I wouldn't call myself an environmentalist in the least. But plastic just sitting there forever and ever disturbs me!




As recent as the turn of the last century (1900), there wasn't any plastic. Folks' bread probably dried out a bit faster, but they were surrounded with all natural items, from their bedding, to their clothes, to their food, it was natural, no chemicals, no polys! No cling wrap melted into their food. And you know what? Things lasted a long time. They were made to last and people took care of what they owned. A married couple could be given a wool blanket for their wedding and it lasted them many decades! Kitchen items were made of metal and wood and also lasted decades or longer. This is why you can go to an antique shop and buy these things, some you can still use. Try that with a plastic cheese greater from 1978!!



So, plastic clogs up the landfills, doesn't last very long and is cheaply made. What to do? If you, like us desire a plastic-less life then you need to know it's going to cost you. Sometimes twice as much or more for a, shall we call them "natural", item.



Over the next several posts I will show you what we have done to make our house more natural and plastic-less. We'll start in the kitchen and move on from there.