Savvy Vegetarian Blog

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Wed, 19 Sep 2007

Fake Plastic Fish - How To Have Our Plastic and Be Green Too

Beth wrote to comment on my paper or plastic post, saying that she writes about alternatives to plastic, but is really all about reducing all of our waste, plastic and otherwise. I promptly visited her excellent blog, Fake Plastic Fish, and replied:

"Hi Beth. I loved your post about re-using plastic bags! (Monday Sept 17th 2007 at Fake Plastic Fish) It's true - without plastic bags, our lives would be much more difficult. As you say, the thing is to never throw them away, and re-use them over and over again. Now, if only we could get stores to give away bags that never got holes in them, and never ripped. Seriously, I think we should explore traditional ways, lost to plastic and refridgeration, of keeping food fresh."

"My sense is that when people lived down the road from the greengrocer, ate all their meals at home, had gardens, etc, then plastic bags weren't needed. Personally I have no desire to go back to being a woman in the middle ages, or even the 1950's, but there should be ecological ways to have our fridges and plastic bags (or the equally convenient green alternative.'

Beth wrote back:
"I do wonder how people kept bread from drying out before plastic. Any ideas about that? Since I started buying artisan bread in paper bags, I've had the worst time with it getting hard. At first I didn't want to resort to putting it in plastic, and then I thought, why not? The plastic is here. There's no point in living in denial about that. And as long as it's here, it would be better to use it than have it go to waste."

"I have stopped using plastic bags for most of my produce. Like I said, I carry used plastic grocery bags for little things or stuff with a lot of dirt on it. But I see no need to put my apples, bananas, oranges, avocados, stuff like that into a plastic bag. What's all this fruit and veg segregation about anyway? It's not like they're going to contaminate each other if they touch!

"So please let me know anything that you find out about alternative ways to store food, especially ways that don't involve going out and buying a bunch of new stuff. I like it when environmentalism and frugality meet."

I thought about when I was a kid long ago, and remembered metal bread boxes, big glass jars, waxed paper and waxed paper bags. I also remember bread pudding, french toast, bread crumbs stretching the hamburger, stuffing the chickens and turkeys, or crusting the mac'n'cheese. Plus we ate things besides bread, like biscuits and muffins, and the inevitable porridge and potatoes. Sometimes my mother baked bread, or went to the local bakery where they put the bread in paper bags. But it never lasted long enough to get dry and stale, with five hungry children in the house.

My question is, 'Can we be green without domestic slavery?' And Beth at Fake Plastic Fish needs your ideas, opinions, suggestions, and advice about how we can eliminate unnecessary plastic, dramatically reduce our plastic waste, and live responsibly with the kinds of plastic that do have real benefits.