What's up with plastic in tea bags?

I stopped buying tea bags because either the boxes were wrapped in plastic or, even worse, each  tea bags was. Did you know that the tea bags themselves contain plastic, so they can't be composted?

According to the blog, Treading My Own Path, tea bag sheaths contain reinforcing plastic. Read Lindsay's post here: Plastic Free Tea. 

If you'd like to do something about this, join her campaign. Oh, and use loose tea, which tastes better anyway!

The problem of water

Americans use more plastic disposable water bottles than any other country in the world. Eighty percent of them end up in landfills. The Healthy Human website reports:

The production of bottled water uses 17 million barrels of oil a year.

1. It takes 3 times the amount of water in a bottle of water to make it as it does to fill it.
2. Plastic water bottles are made from a petroleum product called polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which requires giant amounts of fossil fuels to make and transport.
3. The production of bottled water uses 17 million barrels of oil a year. That’s slightly more than it would take to fill one million cars a year with fuel.
4. It takes almost 2,000 times the energy to manufacture a bottle of water than it does to produce tap water.
5. If you fill a plastic water bottle so it is about 25% full, that’s about how much oil it took to make the bottle.

One alternative is to drink tap water or filtered tap water. Most tap water in the U.S. is pretty safe. (You can check your municipality's water testing results to reassure yourself.) You can buy filters that attach to your sink faucet, which is the best choice for water filtration, but they are expensive. 

Another option is to use a Brita water pitcher with disposable filters. The filters are made of #5 plastic, which can be difficult to recycle. However, the Brita company maintains a recycling program where you can send the filters back to them on their dime. 

To recycle your Brita filter, go to the Brita Company's website and create an account. If you don't want email from them, make sure to indicate that as you create the account. After you enter your address, you will be emailed a link to print a UPS label.

Plastic and traveling

I recently went by airplane to California. I knew that water was difficult to get without plastic in airports and on the airplane, so I brought empty water bottles with me to fill in the airport. I also brought snacks and a sandwich wrapped in cloth. This worked pretty well, except that the water fountain water tasted terrible and I couldn't get the flight attendants to refill my water bottles. What I ended up doing was getting coffee in a paper cup, rinsing that out and having the flight attendant refill the coffee cup.

Bringing food was a little more successful. I was able to avoid both having to purchase food at exorbitant prices and also the dreaded styrofoam take out container. (see left)

While in the airport, I saw the following amazing item (at right): a toilet with a rotating plastic sleeve to keep your tushi from touching the toilet seat where other people have sat. This has never been a big concern for me, but apparently it is for others. I chose not to push the button to rotate the plastic sleeve. Thankfully, it wasn't automatic!

How does recycling work?

Here's some information about multi-stream recycling:

How Recycling Works

Making gluten-free bread

As I was making my weekly bread yesterday, it struck me how beautiful the process was -- from mixing the dry ingredients together, to adding the egg, to the risen loaf (before baking). Not only am I avoiding buying bread in plastic -- I can get most of the ingredients in bulk or cardboard containers -- but I'm also creating art and linking myself to my past, when generations of women made bread every week.

Grocery Store Thermometer - How did I do this week?

Here are my groceries for the week. On the left are the ones that are packaged in plastic, some of which might be recyclable. (Empty Tom's toothpaste tubes, for instance, can be shipped back to Tom's of Maine for free for them to recycle.) Theoretically, the company that picks up recycling in my town recycles milk cartons and #1 & 2 containers (Burt's Bees shampoo & conditioner, Coconut Milk shampoo & Coconut Water conditioner). The yogurt containers are #5s, so probably not recyclable, but I had a free coupon for the Noosa, which I couldn't resist trying. (It was very good!) Xochil chips look like they come in paper, but the inside is coated with plastic.

The groceries in the middle had minimal, but some plastic -- labels on the fruit (I brought my own bags for the produce), plastic caps on the hazelnut spread and mayonnaise, and the fish is wrapped in plastic coated paper. Next time I should remember to bring my own container for the fish.

The products on the right are either packaged in glass, foil, paper or cardboard, or were bulk items that I brought my own bags for (raisins, coffee, chocolate-covered almonds & ginger). The winners of the least packaged products this week were Hodgson Mill corn starch, Marcal toilet paper, and Frontera salsa, The Organic Valley eggs have a plastic label on the cardboard carton, and the Organic Valley butter is wrapped in tin foil, but that probably also has a plastic coating.

I'm looking forward to farmer's market season, when I can go back to buying fruit and vegetables without labels stuck on them!

Gaia Hates Plastic: I love my town

Gaia Hates Plastic: I love my town

Shopping

Today I walked to the market and did my week's shopping for produce, bulk items, and other groceries. I'll go to the butcher on Tuesday, since it's not open on Monday. I could have gone today but I didn't bring containers and quite frankly, I had enough to carry without adding more.

What I learned:

1) February is not the month to decide to do all my shopping WALKING distance from my house. Brrr!

2) I spent 60 percent of what I usually spend on groceries because I was very aware that I'd be carrying them home. I do still need to buy meat, but that's not going to make up the other 40 percent.

3) I couldn't get chocolate milk for my son, who won't drink either regular milk or milk with chocolate syrup added. (He's a little like a finicky cat, but don't say I said so. We stopped (by car) at Shoprite to pick up the chocolate milk for him. I don't expect him to go a month without milk because of my whims.)

4) It felt pretty good to be able to walk, buy groceries, and walk home in 45 minutes. That's less time than it usually takes me to shop.

So all in all, less time and less money: I'm pretty happy with my experiment.

I love my town

How great is it to be able to walk two blocks to buy fresh bread, nice cheese, organic groceries, and fresh meat at the butcher. Plus I can get my bicycle repaired and a cup of coffee at at least four coffee houses, two diners and Dunkin Donuts within a mile. Maybe that's too much coffee. Nah, never enough coffee.

So for the next month, I'm going to try to reduce my carbon footprint by walking to get all my groceries. Also, this will help with my desire to get more exercise.

This is somewhat problematic because my carbon footprint in gas to purchase groceries is very minimal compared to the fossil fuels used to grow produce with fertilizers, ship the groceries near enough to me to get them, and refrigerate them till I get there. After all, the supermarket is only 2 miles away. How much gasoline does that really take, especially in my hybrid car?

But as an exercise in appreciating what is close by (and plastic free), onward and forward.