Big Plastic Count

[igenlode]

I completed my week's Big Plastic Count data for this year -- to my surprise it was actually one item fewer than in 2022 (12 items as versus 13), despite the fact that it was not a very representative week in terms of the amount of plastic waste generated.

During the count period I happened to get given a fair few plastic-packaged items of food by other people to use up, including a packet of crisps, a plastic pint bottle of milk on the turn, and two plastic packages of fresh herbs, none of which would have featured in a normal week! I also succumbed to the lure of massively-reduced supermarket vegetables on the bargain aisle (rhubarb for 63p instead of over £2 unpackaged at the greengrocer's) and ended up finishing those during the count period....

Comments

[watervole]

Plastic is an odd thing. I occasionally get annoyed by campaigns to remove all supermarket plastic -because some of it extends shelf life and hence reduces food waste.
but like you, I try to minimise my use of it.

I don't buy much in the way of toys for my granddaughter - virtually all cuddly toys are acrylic, so none of those (unless from charity shops) and I can't recall when I last got her anything made of plastic - apart from some of the pieces in new board games.

She has a wonderful ability to make games with virtually anything.

[igenlode]

I am not afflicted with children and thus don't have to make decisions on whether to buy them plastic toys or not ;-)
(And when I do give people presents, they tend to be home-made ones or second-hand, which was always the case in our family, mainly because most of the really interesting stuff is only ever available second-hand -- a shiny generic boxed toy with lights on it was rather less appealing than a leaflet with instructions on how to build more 1930s Meccano cranes using the bits from the family set!)

[watervole]

Our default rule is that second-hand is always acceptable. The kids rapidly learnt that you can get three second-hand books for the price of one new one....

I sometimes knit stuff for gifts. Hand made socks are much warmer, and you get to request the colours!

[igenlode]

I've never had much success with handmade socks (although other people are always terribly impressed that you can engineer such a *complicated* object at all, so they make acceptable gifts...) I have foot/circulation problems, and walking on a coarse-knit woollen sock is like having tram tracks under your soles :-(

I used to save up my pocket-money for books when I was little; it took three weeks to afford the average paperback. Then I very rapidly discovered that you could get multiple second-hand books from jumble sales for *one* week's pocket-money (even now I am rarely prepared to pay more than a pound or so to acquire a book!)

[watervole]

I buy ebooks - mainly because I find them much easier to read in bed... (I'm prone to shoulder pain)