by Yogi, Healer, Traveller, Activist, and Dreamer Jolene McGill
Here we go again. Giving this writing thing another shot. Maybe you noticed and maybe you didn’t but I have not written a blog in almost a year’s time. I am not sure why I deny myself the pleasure of writing to you as I journey down this road to a plastic free life and ultimately a world that is free of the heavy use of fossil fuels, but yet I do.
So here I am after jet setting around the globe and travelling in one very beautiful but complicated Veg oil bus. I find myself writing to you from Cape Breton Island, my home for the summer.
As I get settled in to my life here I begin yet again to collect all my plastic waste. Something I started doing while I was living and travelling in our veg oil bus that I mentioned above. I got this idea from Beth Terry, The author of Plastic Free: How I kicked the plastic habit and you can too. She offers it up as a way of becoming aware of the amount of plastic waste that you generate. I find it is a simple way to shed light on exactly how much plastic is used and for what. My hope is that through collecting my plastic waste I will begin to become a more conscious consumer and ultimately use less. Ah the dream!
So I have picked up an old cardboard box from my work and decided that all the plastic that both Kyle and I use will go in there. Then once a week I will empty out the contents for recycling and document them here with you.
The results for this week are in:
- Plastic wrap- from a journal, which was a gift
- 2 almond milk tetra packs
- 1 mango juice box with straw and of course the wrapper for the straw was in
- Packaging for veggie sausages
- Pro bar wrapper
- 2 Organic produce tags from kale
- Packaging from celery
- Chocolate bar wrapper
- Styrofoam bowl (cringe!) with plastic lid
- 2oz plastic cup with lid
- snack bar wrapper
- dental floss packaging, thus we must include the floss container and floss itself
- chip bag
- Saran wrap from Broccoli
- random plastic bit from condiment top
- 6 salt water taffy wrappers
My thoughts on this:
At first I was upset with myself for not being more conscious while I shop. Considering I just came from Central America where it is very evident that we have a plastic addiction. I mean It is literally everywhere down there. It covers the streets, beaches and roadsides. You can’t even take a step without seeing at least 10 (and believe me it is much more than 10) pieces of plastic trash. Our throw away culture strikes again. Hurray Humanity!