- Jenica
#OneJarChallenge - April 2016
This month I produced 1.5 ounces of trash:
2 cheese packages
2 broccoli tags
1 tea wrapper
1 band aid
1 blister pad
1 vitamin jar seal
2 sandwich sticks
1 straw
2 hair ties
4 plastic clothing tag markers
1 disposable razor blade and handle
A month worth of floss
This brings my total for this year up to 14.6 ounces of trash. Remember that last year I produced 3 lbs. and 2.15 ounces of trash. My goal is to beat it! And at this rate, I am on track.
So now comes the reflection part. The part that I, like many people, find rather difficult because I need to admit that I made mistakes and figure out how to fix them. This month I learned a lot. And had quite a few success stories as well! But let’s take a look at what I could change first.
-2 cheese packages: Cheese has been a hard one for me. I am a cheese lover. Like, all capitals L-O-V-E-R. Like I don’t think I could ever give up cheese. Up until this month, I hadn’t been able to find a local maker who would offer it to me packaging free until…the farmers market opened up for summer! There I was able to find a distributor based locally who was happy to hand me a chunk of cheese in my container! Problem solved.
-2 broccoli tags: I have been weighing this one in my mind recently because the local coop here sells broccoli that are held together by these weird rubber band tags. Fred Meyer however sells them individually without the packaging – but they’re not organic. What is more important to me right now? Organic or packaging free? It’s a pretty tricky question and with summer coming, I am going to hold off on answering it and just by fresh, local veggies instead.
-1 tea wrapper: I was at a friend’s house in the evening and tea sounded so lovely. So I accepted her offer to have some. This is a case where refusing was the answer. I have also thought about keeping a little bag of tea and a tea ball in my car for situations like this because they actually come up more than you think!
-1 band aid: I forgot to say no! The doctor gave me a shot and before I could call off the band aid, she had already stuck it on me. Next time…
-1 blister pad: I gave myself a nasty blister from some new sandals and pulled out this little guy I had lying around. I’ll need to research alternatives that I can use in the future.
-1 vitamin jar seal: I don’t see much of a way around this. I have Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 (cold sores) and without daily L-Lysine, I can’t control them.
-2 sandwich sticks: Prepared. I have to be prepared. Not only prepared but I have to predict the future. Because a lot of the time I need to refuse something because I “think” they will try to give it to me. This is one case where my future readings were not correct.
-1 straw: The local store where I buy smoothies switched from compostable straws back to plastic ones (to avoid GMO corn in the compostable ones). I, unaware, purchased my smoothie all the same and now have this little guy to show for it.
-2 hair ties: I have yet to give these up. And might never. We’ll see.
-4 plastic clothing tag markers: Even used clothing has to hold the price tag on somehow…
-1 disposable razor blade and handle: Quite a few months ago I invested in a safety razor and I love it! I still had this laying around in the bathroom though and it was finally time to get rid of it.
-A month worth of floss: I actually switched to a WaterPik earlier in the month so no more floss for me! I’ll explain that choice soon in a future blog post.
And that’s that! A month worth of trash again! I think this month I can really beat my record - Less than 1 ounce of trash! Doubting me? We’ll see about that…