My Plastic-Free Life's Show Us Your (Plastic) Trash Challenge

Happy New Year!!!

I've been saving my plastic trash for a while now, but never really tallying it up or documenting it, so in an attempt to make myself analyze it a little more this year, I'm going to take Beth Terry's (My Plastic-Free Life) challenge.  If you want to join me, the link is here:
http://myplasticfreelife.com/showyourplastic/challenge-show-us-your-plastic-trash/

Let me know if you're taking the challenge and what impact it makes on your life.

For some reason, my calling in life revolves around trash!  It's been a focal point in my life for a long time and I'm finally coming back around to it.  I used to save candy wrappers in my bedroom as a child because I thought they were too pretty to be thrown away.  I saved a lot of things like that, always wondering why we used things one time and then 'got rid' of them....where did they all end up?  So here I am in my 30's (almost 40's!) and thinking about trash consumes a lot of the time I spend on this earth.  When I found out how much food is thrown away each year in the U.S., it really astounded me, so I started to take a look at our food waste and what we could do about it.  We started composting and I can happily say we've cut our food waste down to almost nothing.  I just ordered some worms to try vermicomposting, so I'll do a whole entry on composting one of these days.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that thinking about (and actually analyzing) what we're doing is usually a good way to make a change (or decide that you like the way everything is going and stay the same).  Yes, life is short and it does take time to do things like this, but I think the time spent is worth it if it produces helpful results.  So, who's with me? :)

Supersized Everything - Waste Included

Glad to be back after a bit of a break!  I'm in MD staying with my parents.  I am finding a lot of food for blogging down here, though! :)

We stopped at McDonald's for ice cream cones last night.  For 3 ice cream cones, they gave us 27 napkins!  Not an exaggeration and not a misprint!  Here's a picture:

Now my boys are messy, but even they don't need 9 napkins for 1 ice cream cone (a very tiny ice cream cone at that)!

We visited Applebee's and the boys were given the plastic kids' cups with lids and straws.  When they asked for a refill and tried to give the waitress their cups, she set them down and brought them brand new plastic cups....?!?  So instead of 3 plastic cups, lids, straws (which was bad enough), we ended up with 5 of each...for 1 visit.

And then there was our visit to Walmart.  We all love low prices, but sometimes you have to wonder at what price these low prices come.  But now TerraCycle has partnered with Walmart, so it makes me want to give them a chance.  Well, the Walmart that I visited here didn't have any TerraCycle items to be found and when I asked 2 of the workers, they looked at me like they had never heard of TerraCycle before...so I wasn't off to a good start.  I did need some allergy meds., though, so I purchased a few things while I was there.  When I pulled out my reusable bag to ask the lady in the 'less than 20 items' lane to use it, she shook her head 'No' and told me to push my items up and she was shoving them as quickly as she could into her plastic bag.  All around me, I watched carts piling up with tons of plastic bags....it seems that Walmart has  a policy of only putting 5 items in a bag, no matter what their size.  Some people had what looked like 10 plastic bags for what I'm guessing was no more than 30 items.  ?!?  Did I mention that the entire Walmart store smells like badly offgassing plastic?  What is that all about?  They are not really doing much to improve my impression of them, although I do realize that their prices are hard to beat and there are many people who depend on them for cheaply priced items.  I have a love / hate relationship with Walmart.  I really want to love them, but I keep finding more reasons to hate them.  I guess this story is to be continued...

And I now have 3 letters to sit down and write.  I'm hoping they will be taken seriously.  Have you ever written a letter to a company and gotten a really great or satisfying response?

What's your Walmart story?  What do you think about fast food and restaurant waste?  Lots more food for thought....