Cooking dinner for the flat tonight, I am going to be prepared! I took my containers to fill up the flour at Bin Inn and my glass container to get the chicken in at the butcher. I was going to do a Hawaiian pizza as well, but I now know that if I want ham without plastic, then I need to call ahead, and they will set some aside for me and not package it. I also bought cheese from Van Dams, a Dutch café that also sells cheeses. They only had hard cheese, so I still had to get the Brie from the supermarket.
The pizza was so tasty, it was definitely a positive reinforcement to take the time to pre-plan dinner and allocate time to make the bases from scratch and Van Dams enables me to buy cheese without plastic packaging.
Recently, we received a promotion in the mail with an offer for a free six-week trial for The Press. I thought this would be a great way to keep on current affairs and so accepted the offer. Today, I only just became conscious of the fact that it comes wrapped in plastic. I won’t be ordering this past the free trail. Again, students and free stuff what can I say…
I went to get a snack because I didn’t bring any afternoon tea with me. The problem is there is nothing in the vending machine that didn’t come in plastic. I was very restrained and did not go for the chips I was craving. Instead I found a gumball machine with paper bags and got $1 worth of M and M’s to tide me over. I need to find snack that I can have and take with me, that doesn’t have plastic packaging.
I went to my friends house for dinner and was bringing dessert. In the supermarket I had to go through a few options to find something that was plastic free (that wasn’t fruit salad!).
I found ice cream in cardboard and mini eclairs which were also in cardboard.
I did find after I opened them, that they were sitting in a plastic tray. The tray could be recycled so I didn’t feel too bad.
I looked up an alternative to buying dry shampoo, apparently a light application of cornflour works just as well. I tried it and I appears to work reasonably well. This is a much cheaper and plastic free alternative. For darker hair, add a touch of cocoa powder.
I went on a young adults’ camp for the weekend and as I helped unload the food for the weekend from the back of the car, I felt almost disgusted at the sight of so much unnecessary plastic! Individual small bags of chips in their big bag, in plastic shopping bags. It was just so wasteful.
There has definitely been a shift in my perception of and thinking around plastic from the start of this project.
When we went for our walk, we took morning tea with us. Unfortunately, all that was on offer was chips and muesli bars wrapped in plastic packaging. I’m not going to lie, I love salt and vinegar chips so I was equally disappointed as I was excited.
This was the view on our walk at the Rakaia Gorge. It was good to be in nature again and be reminded of the beauty that is so worth preserving.
“I would rather live in ignorant bliss than be overwhelmed with the knowledge of the impact my life is having in the environment” – My flatmate’s thoughts after going through a period of focusing on her environmental impact before quickly getting overwhelmed and now not having that as a focus for her. This is the drop in the bucket mentality that stops people from acting in the small ways, which as a collective, do make a difference. This will be important to remember to encourage people to see the small things that they can do, that as a collective, will make a difference.