I can’t say how I feel about this. On one hand, plastic bills last significantly longer than the current cotton paper bills. Australia uses plastic bills and you can’t tear them the way you can rip a Canadian bill. So in the long-run it’ll be cheaper to produce the money and therefor more environmentally friendly to produce. (Energy use, etc.)

Then again, they’re plastic.

But… is this really that big of a deal? I mean, I’m mainly complaining about single use plastics and the new bills definitely aren’t single use. Yes, they’ll eventually wear out, but things like computers, phones and appliances wear out as well. At least they’ll be used for years before that happens.

I think this time the benefits outweigh the negatives and I’m all for the plastic money. Am I the only one?

But, I’m still going on the plastic-free challenge. It’s been two months now and I had to ease up on the plastic restrictions in regards to the food I buy. Of course, I’m still trying to find anything I can plastic-free, but I have to consider my health first.

That said… I have to admit that I haven’t been as excited about the challenge over the past couple of weeks. For some reason, I’ve found myself not really caring if I buy short-term plastics or not and actually the other day I bought a hot chocolate on the way to work, complete with paper cup and plastic lid. Granted, this is the only time I’ve given in… but I don’t know… for some reason I’m just not into it as strongly as I was before.

I’m hoping this is just a by-product of the insanity going on at work over the past month, but I guess we’ll see soon…

I love Victoria because there are so many options for me food-wise. There’s a new restaurant downtown called West Coast Waffles that serves gluten-free waffles (!!) so my friend Brie and I decided to get together and check it out. It was yum!

After lunch, we walked around downtown for a bit. I bought a few things (a new German book, gluten-free black licorice), but the big stop was for shampoo! I finally finished the last of my pre-challenge shampoo and I needed to get some bulk shampoo that isn’t in a plastic container.

Lush it was! My hair and scalp are both really dry during the winter so I bought two different shampoo bars. One was made with cade oil, which reeks of camp fire initially, but thankfully the smell doesn’t stick around! (The website promotes that shampoo with the tagline, “The scent of freshly made tar.” Ha!) The other is a jasmine conditioning bar. I used them tonight and love them; I’d definitely buy more bulk shampoo from Lush and would also recommend their bulk deodorant bars, which smell awesome.

I’m normally not a big Lush fan, but for plastic-free toiletries, they’re certainly the way to go these days as I have no clue where else to buy that stuff. (That said, if you know of any place that sells bulk plastic-free toiletries, please let me know!)

Over the past few weeks, as I’ve slowly run out of the food I bought before my challenge started (ie: frozen stuff), I’m starting to realize how limited I am in what I can eat.

In addition to being vegetarian, I’m also allergic to dairy and gluten. For some reason, very few bakeries in Vancouver make gluten-free bread and the ones that do all wrap the bread in plastic. (The only gluten-free bakery I know of that doesn’t do this is in Victoria.) If I wanted to make my own bread at home, I need to have a lot of weird flours that are virtually impossible to find (here at least) in bulk and many of them come in small, plastic bags. Nut butters come with lids that are lined with or made of plastic. Most produce has plastic stickers. I could go on.

When I first started this challenge, one of my “rules” was that my health comes first. I’m currently home sick from work and my seriously diminished diet has likely contributed to this. After a lot of guilt and re-thinking, I’ve decided to make a few changes.

In cases where I can get plastic-free versions or can go without, then I’ll do that. (IE: I will buy in bulk when at all possible and I won’t buy things I don’t need, like microwave dinners or chips.) But, with things that I wouldn’t be able to buy otherwise, like xanthan gum, etc, I’ll purchase in the plastic until I can find an alternative source.

I feel seriously guilty doing this and trust me, I don’t want to! But like I’ve said before, I can’t put my health in jeopardy because of this challenge. I need to be eating better and while I figure this all out, I’m going to have to back down on a few things.

Of course, I will still stick to the rest of the challenge! Hopefully this will be my only concession.

FAIL.

Before our parent evenings at school, the staff gets dinner paid for since we can’t go home after the end of the school day. Sometimes we go out to a nearby restaurant but for this week’s parent night, the majority voted to order sushi.

Of course, this posed a problem for me as sushi restaurants, for some reason, use a ridiculous amount of plastic. I thought about what I should do for a few days before the sushi night. Should I bring my own dinner? Should I accept the plastic and bring it home, adding it to my “Sin Bin”?

Another teacher was going to put in the order so I finally decided to ask her (A) not to order my meal on the phone and (B) to let me go with her so I could order at the restaurant, where I could give them my stainless steel containers to use.

I also asked them not to put my container into a plastic bag (it has its own handle even then I have cloth bags) and not to include any soy sauce (which technically I can’t have anyway because of the gluten).

I feel very proud of myself! Not a big deal but it really did take me a few days to decide what to do and I feel happy that I stood up for myself and said I wouldn’t accept the plastic containers. I think this is a big step forward for me. 

I’m pretty stoked about this so please check out my first interview!

Deodorant, however, is going to wait for a bit. My parents gave me a Lush deodorant bar for Christmas so I can start using that now. I still haven’t quite figured out how to use it. It’s a hard bar so it doesn’t really rub off onto your skin. Do I need to use water with it? I’ll have to check out Lush to see what the scoop is.

(By the way, at some point in the future I’m going to try making my own deodorant using one part baking soda to six parts cornstarch. The baking soda deodorizes while the cornstarch acts as an antiperspirant.)

I’m going to Lush for my shampoo because I like their shampoo bars. I’ve heard about using a variety of homemade shampoos like a simple mixture of baking soda and water, but my skin has always been really particular about what I can put on it and what I can’t and that, unfortunately, won’t do the trick.

So, my problems are face cream and toothpaste. I’ve found a bunch of face cream recipes but they all seem to have 100 ingredients that each cost an arm and a leg. Any suggestions? I’d love suggestions on making inexpensive toothpaste as well.

Unfortunately, the only oats I’ve found that can claim 100% to be gluten-free are ones that are pre-packaged in plastic. So, those are out! I decided to make a big batch of rice pudding to have for breakfast during the week but needed vanilla. All the lids were the same size (small) so I figured at least I could minimize the plastic by at least getting the largest glass bottle of vanilla that the store had.

Is it possible to find vanilla (or other extracts) without a plastic lid?

Otherwise, avoiding buying anything at all seems to have solved my plastic problems!

Obviously, general avoidance of any purchases at all isn’t a habit I can continue. I’ll have to buy something some time and when I do, I’ll have to make some choices. For example, I was in a store last night where they had the most brilliant pair of earrings I have ever seen; however, they were on a plastic tag. I thought to myself, “it’s just a tiny card. I guess that’s not really a big deal.” I took them off the rack and started towards the check-out.

And then I realized that this plastic-free challenge means NO plastics, big or small. Not just the common daily things like straws and wrapping around DVDs, but also little things like stickers on produce and earring tags.

That was my big revelation and I sadly (but with a greater feeling of empowerment) hung the earrings back on the rack. My first real success, I think!

Other than that, my week has been long and had lots of other ups and downs that aren’t appropriate for this blog! I think that’s put me into a “mood” and probably why I’m not really interested in writing much lately. But, I’m still here and still love and appreciate all the support you guys are giving me, so thanks! Week one down and just fifty-one to go!