Interestingly, I also have given up orange juice in cartons for oranges. They taste much better and have less sugar and more fiber than processed orange juice! Raw fruit and vegetables are not a total answer to the problem of plastic packaging, only a small step towards reducing plastic waste! These days even boxes of oranges and apples may be put on pallets, loaded onto trucks and wrapped in thick plastic for delivery. Our food coop is lobbying our wholesale supplier to find a type of plastic which can at least be recycled. There's an enormous amount of plastic that cosumers don't see because it is removed before foods are put on the shelves. It is still worth the effort to simplify one's eatign habits.
I am soooooo unhappy with the changes in recycling. (thank you Mr President for pissing off China). We use to fill our recycle bin to the top every 2 weeks. Now? Less than half.d
The only organic salad greens and spinach and tasty tomatoes and carrots here each winter are in clamshell type containers. English Cucumbers are wrapped in plastic-no options. organic chicken and ground beef? Plastic. Wild caught Pacific fish? Plastic.
My recycling center, which used to be single stream, now requires all plastics to be separated by number, as well as other metals separated from aluminum, and glass, corrugated cardboard, and paper all separate. In their news letter they basically said, coming to a recycler near you where ever you live. At least they still take most everything. I peaked into the recycling bins at an upscale Whole Foods not long ago and the amount of contamination in dedicated and well marked bins was pretty amazing.
Around here this time of year what gets me is all the gardening products that come in heavy single use bags. Compost, rock, mulch, gardening soil, and fertilizers. As far as I know, none of those bags can be recycled and there are ways to avoid a lot of them by buying in bulk, making your own compost, etc.
It is a mind bender to recall all the things that used to not come in plastic. One of the things that irks me is how detergent now comes in huge plastic bottles or in plastic pods. It is hard to find cardboard boxed detergent but I keep looking. I recently bought one of those humongous packages of toilet paper at Costco for the first time only to find out it was multiple six packs inside yet another plastic bag. We blame the corporations but we're the ones who buy the stuff.
Rogar, if those bags are type 2 or type 4, they can be wiped clean and recycled with the grocery bags at your store drop off (if you have one)
Roger that’s a shame because it will cut down on people recycling.
If you are thinking of the strict new rules for separating recyclables, yes I don’t see the volume of traffic at the center compared to single stream. I’ve not even organized the finer points. It requires maybe 8 different storage areas or containers. I have a small garage and house, and as unmanly as it might seem, no shed. I’m also into the simple living style and it’s an increase in clutter. A person has to elevate the priority of things to adjust. But like the news letter says, there may come a time when single stream is no longer practical.
Yeah we have small house, etc and I won’t be doing that.
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