STOP USING THROWAWAY PRODUCTS, RIGHT NOW.

There are some things that we do without thinking because they've become a habit - at home, in the car, in schools, at our work places, even as part of our social life. They are so common that we don’t see them for what they are. We've even been made to believe that throwaway items are part of our "rights" to have an easier life and reduce unwelcome work. Well, think again. Those “disposable” products that you use almost daily have a rather small cost to you - or, at least, it appears at the time. But they have a huge cost for the environment and most will never be recycled, ending up at dumps where they take up space for years or centuries or getting incinerated where they poison the skies over our cities and farms. And some of them, especially the soft plastics, are a real danger to your health.

Say "no" to food-related plastics.*

Plastics are made from toxic substances that contaminate earth, air and water, both in their manufacturing and in their disposal as trash. Once created, plastics are non-biodegradable, and while they can be transformed, but they don’t go away. Only about 5% of plastics ever get recycled. Burning and putting them in landfills only removes them from our immediate vicinity, but their toxic waste will make it back into the environment. The presence of plastic trash around us, or anywhere they get to, continues to poison our air, water systems, rivers, and oceans. For everyone, plastics in the environment mean added risks of cancer and birth defects. For many species of animals and fish, it has already created much illness and is accelerating their extinction.

You'll want to have the least contact with soft plastics as possible. When people use plastic packages for foods, the chemicals tend to filter from the packaging to the foods they contain. It’s worse yet when plastic containers are heated in microwave ovens because that accelerates the migration of toxic substances.

The only way to reduce the damage that is done by plastics is to cut back on their use, and thereby, overtime, slowing their industrial production. You can do your part to overcome this problem by refusing to buy plastic products. That means trying to extend the lifetime of the useful existing plastic items that you already have and refusing to buy new ones, even if that creates some personal inconvenience. Start by saying "no" to throwaway products. You’ll save money, be healthier for it, and do good for the earth -- all at the same time.

- Tell the sales person that you want paper instead of plastic cups at the fast-food window. Stop going to places that only have plastic throwaway cups.

- Buy fresh food products, whenever possible, and carry your own paper or cloth bags to the markets. Ask the man behind the counter that you want your meat or cheese wrapped in paper instead of plastic.

- When you buy processed foods, search for those that come in glass bottles or metal cans. Buy larger-sized products so that the containers can be reused; recycle them when you're finished.

- Make sure your using as few cleaning products as possible. Look for large-size packages or containers for these products. That way you won’t have to buy so much plastic on a regular basis. Reuse or recycle all these containers.

- Don’t buy plastic bags or plastic wrap. Wax paper and butcher paper are excellent products for your temporary food storage and lunch bag needs. If you want neater packaging, you can use a bit of tape to hold the paper together.

- Whenever possible, use paper bags for the kitchen trash. Of course, someone in your family will occasionally come home with plastic bags. When that happens, reuse them for trash or as lunch bags. All extra plastic bags should be carried to the supermarket for recycling. None, except the dirtiest one, should go into the household trash. If you are required to use a large plastic bag for trash removal day, line your largest trash can with it, and make sure that is the only plastic bag you use during the week.

- Don’t buy plastic throwaway drinks. Always carry your own metal drinking container and water when you leave the house. When you have to buy or carry an occasional drink outside the house, look for the aluminum cans. Serve drinks from bulk containers or provide canned drinks at gatherings. Cans have a much better chance of being efficiently recycled than plastics.

- Don’t heat or store fatty or acid foods in plastic containers. You’ll heat and store just as well and avoid risks, using the glass containers that you've recycled

Say: "No." to excess paper use, too.*
Just a few years ago, almost nobody thought about the use of paper products in the home and office. We used a lot and wasted even more. Paper was cheap, and if anyone mentioned all that wood being used for paper, the easy answer was that trees were totally "renewable" resources. We know that that planned re-growth was mostly a fantasy and that our wasting of paper is inexcusable if we hope to save more of our forests. Clearly, it isn’t possible, or reasonable, to eliminate all paper usage in the home – we definitely need some toilet paper and paper for print outs from the computer. On the other hand, with a bit of effort, we can get “greener” on this issue and reduce our paper consumption a lot. Here are some of ways that you can cut back on or recycle paper products.

- At home, use dishes for food and not paper plates. Take your own dishes and utensils to picnics and other large-scale events. (You don't have to ask permission on this, just show up with your own and use them. If others don't understand, explain it to them.)

- Use rags and kitchen towels instead of paper towels. They're free or very cheap and completely re-usable. Kitchen towels don't need to be expensive or you can easily make them at home. Old newspaper is great for cleaning up spills and for cleaning windows glass and mirrors.

- Use cloth napkins and forget about paper napkins. Make your own napkins out of an easily washable fabric or buy small white terry-cloth towels – the kind that can be bought in bulk at the hardware store.

- For computer printing, be sure to print on both sides of your paper. Cut the paper in half if you needed only a small piece of it printed. Use the rest for printing or as note paper.

- Carry home and use scrap paper from work (or any other place where you can get it).

- Pay bills on-line (or by phone). Use email instead of writing letter and notes and get your news from the Internet rather than newspapers or magazines.

- Use washcloths instead of face wipes and cloth handkerchiefs instead of tissues. These last for many years. At home, use cloth diapers and plastic over-wraps. Paper diapers are justifiable only when the child is taken out of the house for several hours at a time. You can carry an extra paper diaper for quick changes.

- Carefully, unwrap gifts and save gift-wrap paper for future reuse. Also save cardboard boxes for storage or shipping containers. When possible, ship in paper envelopes instead of cardboard boxes and recycle crumpled paper as padding for shipping or storing fragile items.

- Save greeting cards and calendar art for craft use by cutting out shapes or pictures. And send e-cards instead of paper cards.

**These sections were adapted from earlier posts to Grandma Susan's Almanac Calendar, Dec. 2010.)

RECYCLE PLASTIC BAGS INTO USEFUL ITEMS.

Even though you may be carefully carrying your own eco-friendly bags when you shop, in some mysterious way or another, plastic bags always find their way into your home. So, wanted or not, you probably have a stash of plastic shopping bags somewhere in your home. This form of trash takes up a lot of space and, if kept in any other than a perfectly dry place, can become an unsanitary mess for the growth of bacteria and a home for cockroaches.

You really don’t want all those plastic bags taking up semi-permanent residence in your home. So, of course, you try to remember to carry your bags to the large grocery stores that will recycle them. Obviously, the recycling bin is the right place for most of them. But there is another thing you can to do: you can recycle a part of your plastic bags at home by making them into crafts. These turn-your-trash-into-art projects are eco-friendly, fun for you and entertaining for your children.

Plastic bags become useful material for your craft projects when they are converted into what is called: “plarn”, a kind of string or rope that’s made from plastic bags. You can make plarn by knitting, crocheting or braiding strips of plastic bags together. Unfortunately, the bags we usually get are white, and those aren’t the most interesting ones for our crafts. You want to look around for the best colors. (Ask family members and neighbors to save their nicest-colored bags for you.) Also, to get a sturdy plarn, you want to choose a medium weight bags – not the really light weight thin ones that tear as they are cut or the very heavy ones that will be difficult to work with.

The colors that I could more easily find were beige and gray, so I combined those colors with some onmipresent whites bags to make my first 2 easy projects.

Here’s what I did.

I cut up the plastic shopping bags in continuous strips, starting with the largest rectangle that I could make, having cut along the side and bottom seams. Then I cut one continuous strip starting at an edge and spiraling around the bag. I cut the strip yo be about an inch and a quarter thick.

There is no problem for a bit thicker or thinner strips - these differences just make it a bit nubby and don’t detract from the overall appearance of the final product. Just don’t let the strips get any thinner than about ¾ inch because then they tend to break apart when you’re working with them. You can also tie the strip from one bag to that of the next without any problem and then roll the resulting long strip into a big ball of plarn.

To form the plarn for my projects, I single-chained the plastic strips using a size “I” crochet hook and rolled it into balls. With the three large balls of plarn –white, beige and gray, I made these 2 decorative items.

PLARN-COVERED CLOTHES HANGER

With plarn from just 4 white bags, I made my first project. (I had more bags of this color than I needed so I didn’t have to worry about waste from any mistakes.) I began on one side and knotted the crocheted plarn around a plastic clothes hanger. Starting at the base of the hook, I tied on the plarn and continuously knotted the plarn around the hanger, pushing the knotted loops as closely together as I could. When I got back to the base of the hanger on the other side, I tied off the plarn, leaving the hook of the hanger as it was without any adornment. The resulting plarn-covered clothes hanger looks fairly attractive - and clothes don't slip off. After I knotted the plastic around the hanger, it still didn't look very decorative. To spruce it up a bit, I crocheted regular yarn in a bright green color around the edge of the knotted plarn. (This same project can also be done successfully with 2 wire hangers taped together. So, use those wirehangers if you have them - so you don't have any excuse for buying more plastic hangers.)

PLARN-STRING WALL HANGING

I used the beige and gray plarn from 8 bags to make the strings for a beaded wall hanging. I began with a thin strip of wood, 2-feet long for the top of the hanging. I tied on 3.5-foot strings of plarn, alternating the beige and gray colors, and placed them 2 inches apart. To decorate the hanging strings, I used colorful paper beads and tiny flowers - these last cut out from the flat tops of colored Styrofoam plastic egg cartons - and strung them on the hanging plarn. I knotted the plarn after adding each piece of decoration and tied small wooden round beads on the ends of the plarn to help weight them down.

I used unpainted egg carton material for this project but it could also be painted with acrylic paints. The paper beads were made of strips of colored magazine pages that were rolled around a crochet hook. See my earlier blog for general instructions on how to make the paper beads.

A similar plarn, paper bead and egg carton project can be done for a child’s room, using flowers, birds, stars, small truck shapes or any other motif that you like. With a little encouragement and help, older children can use these materials to design and make their own wall hangings. Just as a reminder, the tops of plastic egg cartons should always be washed before use as craft material.

GET GREENER: cut back on paper products.

This post has now become a part of Grandma Susan’s Almanac Calendar
(See month of March, 2010).

To see the post, just click on the tab for Grandma's Calendar at the top of any page.