Author: admin

Here’s a recap of the weekend. I am going to start with something non-plastic related. I am a proud Philadelphian. I may not have lived there for the past 8 years, but people generally find out I’m from there within the first 5 minutes of meeting me. When I lived in New York, I often got questions like, “oh, do you root for the Mets now?” The answer is a definitive never. If you are currently reading this and thinking, “this guy must be an asshole if he’s a Philly sports fan,” and want to stop reading, I’d like to assure you that I don’t think I am? At least keep reading and don’t decide quite yet solely on my sports fandom.

Honestly not sure anyone is reading this, but if you are, I am going to guess you aren’t a huge football fan so I’ll keep this brief. Sunday, as a proud Philadelphia sports fan, I made the drive up to Philly to go to the Eagles wild card game against the Seahawks with my brother, Kevin. It was a gift to him after he got me free tickets earlier this year. An interesting note about the game was they played an evacuation plan video during the game 3 or 4 times after the assassination of the Iranian general a few days earlier just in case something happened. They were clearly prepared. Anyway, Kevin and I had a great time and I always enjoy spending some time with my brother. It was a rough loss and but a good and hard fought season by the Eagles. Honestly the loss was a little fitting considering the season we just had.

I did get to hang with my sister, Samantha, and Kevin’s girlfriend, Ania, as well for a few hours before the game. I got into Philly around 1:00 and Sam was particularly hungry by the time I arrived. They all wanted to order food as quickly as possible and were not pleased when I reminded them that it had to be takeout in plastic free containers for me. They freaked out for a brief moment before remembering that Philly has some awesome delis. We ordered hoagies (yes hoagies and not subs) wrapped in paper and were good to go. I always enjoy getting a hoagie when I am home just for the Philly bread. If you ever wonder why you can’t get a good cheesesteak outside of Philly, it’s the bread. It’s just perfect. If you ever find yourself in Philly, find out for yourself. I’d really encourage you not to go to Pat’s and Gino’s though. Go to a local spot like Dalessandro’s or John’s Roast Pork; get a roast pork sandwich instead of a cheesesteak in the Italian Market; find a little deli like T&F Farmers Market. I promise the adventure will be worth it.

Ok, time warp back a day. On Saturday I went grocery shopping for the first time this year. Fortunately, I didn’t need a whole lot. I went to Whole Foods because I figured I would have better luck there avoiding plastic. I was wrong. Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely a little bit better than other grocery stores, but not much. I was expecting there to be lots of plastic in prepackaged food and beverages, but it’s amazing how much fresh fruit and veggies are packaged in it too. Leafy greens were largely in clear plastic bags; berries were in small, clear, plastic containers; brussel sprouts were in a plastic, mesh bag. Everywhere I looked, there was plastic. Even the loose items like carrots and kale were held together by a twist tie and rubber bands. I decided to tell myself it was possible these were made of paper and metal, and rubber respectively, not plastic. I kind of knew this was a lie but didn’t want to starve this week. I also got to use my new mesh veggie bags Leah got me for Christmas which was fun. I filled them up with some tomatoes and mushrooms. If nothing else, my plastic footprint in the veggie aisle was almost reduced to nothing this week so I am going to chalk it up to a good start.

Next up was getting some essentials. Fortunately, we were pretty stocked up and didn’t need much here. One problem though is that I love pasta. When I say that I love it, I really mean I really LOVE it. I could legitimately eat pasta for about half of my meals each week. I started making fresh pasta a few months ago because fresh pasta is awesome. It’s not that hard but it’s pretty labor intensive and takes a little bit. Needless to say, dried, boxed pasta is still an essential for me, especially for a quick meal. When I got to the boxed pastas, I was so disheartened. Literally every pasta, from Barilla to really fancy, organic kinds I’ve never heard of before, have a stupid, small, plastic window on the box so you can see the pasta. We all know what pasta looks like and this felt totally unnecessary. I passed on the pasta though for this week and am going to rely totally on handmade pasta. One research task will definitely be to find pre-made pasta that comes in plastic free packaging. Until then, this is going on my Irreplaceable Plastics list. If anyone has some suggestions for this, I’d love to hear them.

At this point, I decided it was best to keep this shopping trip short and to do some additional research before my next excursion. I just needed to get some eggs and olive oil. Eggs were easy to find in a paper carton so check that one off the list. Olive oil on the other hand… After standing in front of all of the oils for about 5 minutes, I finally landed on one that was in a glass bottle and had a metal cap. It wasn’t a perfect trip but I felt like I had done it, a plastic free trip! I felt pretty good about my haul.

Next up was to make some pasta. I won’t bore you with all of the details here but I have posted my pasta recipe as well and I’d encourage you to check it out. It does require a pasta machine but, if you like pasta, it’s sooooo worth it. The difference is really noticeable. Other than the pasta machine, all you need is flour (preferably “typo 00”), eggs, and a little olive oil. As I went to add the olive oil, I was really disheartened. I opened up the cap to find it was all plastic underneath!

This whole endeavor is going to take a lot of research to be able to actually do. In the meantime, another item for my irreplaceable plastics list. This is growing faster than I would have thought.

I decided to make fresh tomato sauce as well. This was only the second time I’ve done this and it was a lot of work. It was pretty good but I’m going to try this again before I post any recipes. Not sure if this will be as regular as the fresh pasta though as it was weirdly way more effort. This may be because I grated the tomatoes by hand. I am probably doing something very wrong but I’ll definitely try this again and let you know once I’ve really figured it out.

All in all, while it definitely wasn’t a perfect first weekend, I think it went pretty well. I am not looking forward to how much planning I am going to have to do for some very basic tasks though. I also know that as much as I am not going to enjoy this part, Leah is going to hate it. Hopefully this project doesn’t ruin our newlywed bliss.

So today it really settled in how hard this is going to be. I had a really boring day. Work was relatively easy, we made dinner, and kind of just hung out tonight. Then, I just took out the garbage and walked Rio… How do you replace plastic garbage and poop bags?! Fortunately, google is a thing and I quickly found out there are compostable versions of each of these. Now, I just need to find out how to purchase them without plastic shipping. I really thought I was about to have my first item added the irreplaceable plastic list.

Needless to say, I just had a big swing in emotions. As someone that has always been a bit environmentally conscious, I am a bit disconcerted that I had never thought of this before. If non-plastic alternatives to trash bags exist, why wouldn’t everyone naturally use them? This seems so obvious. I know that things don’t naturally compost in a landfill but hey, at least they wouldn’t “decompose” into microplastics there.

I know my second rule was that if I already owned something, I would use it until I run out and it needs to be replaced but I felt kind of terrible putting a new trash bag into the can tonight… It’s going to be an interesting year.

Today is New Years Day, 2020. As most people do, I decided to make a new years resolution. It’s a new decade so I decided to really go for it this year.

I will be attempting to go the entire year without using one use plastics.

What does this mean? Quite simply, if I buy something and it’s only going to be used once, it can’t be made out of plastic. A couple of ground rules:

1. This applies to both the item being purchased as well as what it is packaged in. I am not looking forward to having to go to the store instead of using amazon.
2. If I already own something that is a one use plastic, I am going to continue to use it until it runs out before replacing it with a non-plastic option. There’s no point in being wasteful and let’s be real, this is going to be really hard. Staggering this out a bit is going to be helpful.
3. I am not going to apply this to anything related to medicine. As far as I know, there is no way to get medicine not in a little plastic bottle and I don’t want to mess with my health.
4. There may be some essential items for which there are not non-plastic alternatives. If I truly can’t cut something out (or if my wife, Leah, says it can’t be cut out of our household), then I’ll begrudgingly continue to use it. I’ll keep a running list of items that fall into this category and continue to search for alternatives. If anyone has suggestions for plastic free alternatives to anything on this list, please share them!

While this last rule may seem like I plan on throwing my wife under the bus a lot during this experiment, she has actually been quite supportive, albeit quite skeptical as well. When I told her my plan, she got me a plastic free living starter pack for Christmas. This included a super light weight backpack that collapses into a tiny bag the size of my fist, aluminum to go containers with silicon lids for food, beeswax food wrap which can be re-used and replaces saran wrap, re-usable BPA free ziplock bags (that obviously came wrapped in plastic), mesh bags for loose grocery items (like mushrooms and green beans), plastic free laundry detergent, and most importantly, a book called “Life Without Plastic” by Chantai Plamondon and Jay Sinha. I can tell already that this last one will be particularly helpful as it outlines some of the difficulties of going plastic free has what appears to be some really helpful recipes to household products.

I am not sure what this blog will end up being but I am hoping I can leave behind a guide for others to follow if they want. I really enjoy cooking so there will most likely end up being a bunch of recipes in here as well.

One last “ground rule.” I may not post every day. I don’t particularly enjoy writing (so deciding to start a blog was probably really dumb). More importantly though, this means that I am not going to post an update unless I actually have something meaningful to share. I work from home so on days in which I am home all day and just eating leftovers, I will spare you from the excitement I get walking from the couch to the microwave. I do promise to post at least once a week though.

Day one has been fairly easy as our house is already fully stocked with everything we could need and we have really only left the house to take our dog, Rio, for a long walk. We live in Washington D.C. and we decided to walk down to the Capitol Building and from there, down the National Mall. It was a good chance to use my spiffy, new, lightweight backpack. It worked like a charm and was actually noticeably lighter than my regular backpack, even with two full Swell water bottles in it. We brought the aluminum to go container too as a water bowl for Rio. I definitely need to remember to wash that out before I start actually using it for food.

As easy as today has been, I know I am in for a rude awakening soon enough. Wish me luck!