July 12, 2007
Martin - plasticless perfection
Today I was overcome by an uncontrolable urge and bared my soul in front of a whole message board full of friends and strangers. What was the deep, dark secret that I could no longer contain? I’m falling in love with Martin! I’ve known it for a while, but today I just had to tell him. See, he made me laugh, and isn’t that just the sexiest, most attractive quality a man can have? In case you aren’t making the connection here, Martin is the guy who uses all of those fascinating scenic backgrounds for his Self Portrait Sunday photos. He’s won my Tuesday Teaser contest twice, so I guess that means he’s smart as well as sexy. And he does something else that I find incredibly smart and sexy - he writes an eco-friendly blog about reducing our reliance on plastic. I can’t think of many things more attractive than doing your bit to save the world for our kids and succeeding generations, can you?
Martin’s new blog, Plasticless, is filled with common sense solutions and great shopping tips that can help us all live with a little less plastic in our lives. I opened up my last cartridge for my Schick Quatro this morning without even thinking about the implications to our planet. Martin’s blog points out that there’s good reason to go back to using my old double-edge razor and purchasing just blades instead of those fancy plastic cartridges, each of which is separately packaged in it’s own little plastic container inside the plastic-wrapped multi-packs I’ve been buying. If enough of us did that we’d be sending a message that the razor blade market would have to hear.
Plastic grocery bags area huge problem in our landfills, and an even bigger problem when they end up littering our environment. Back when I used to snorkel almost every day, I made it my habit to carry debris out of the ocean each time. The items I found most often were soft drink cans and plastic grocery bags. The bags don’t degrade into something harmless - they end up getting tangled on the reef or drifting across the seabed, where they ensnare marine life and even get eaten by curious fish. Using paper bags isn’t a perfect solution, either. Most of my local stores don’t even carry them anymore, and while some are made of recycled paper, many aren’t. A better solution is to carry your own canvas or string bags. I carry a canvas bag in my car, but I admit I sometimes forget to carry it into the store. I’ll have to work on that. And here’s another tip along those lines. Hobby stores carry sturdy canvas bags that you can buy for five or six dollars. Why pay big bucks for a designer grocery bag when you can buy a plain ones and let the kids help you decorate them - or leave them plain if you prefer.
Here’s a challenge for my readers: Go visit Martin at Plasticless.com. Find ten things you can do in your everyday life that will help reduce your use of plastic. If we all do our bit, we’ll have an impact. Mahalo to Martin for reminding us to take a critical look at the choices we make!
About the whole love thing? That’s not exactly going to go anywhere, since there’s a Mrs. Martin already on the scene and I live too far away to be a stalker. My love will remain pure and chaste, with nary an impure thought to sully it (or at least not any that I’ll be blogging about. 
)
[tags]blogs, ecology, environment, plastic, plasticless.com[/tags]
Posted by skeet @ 3:20 pm • Environment, Blogs
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July 12th, 2007 at 6:21 pm, Angie Says:
A crush is good for the soul, no matter the extent.
July 12th, 2007 at 9:45 pm, Martin Says:
Thanks for this. You made my day
July 12th, 2007 at 10:10 pm, pelf Says:
I’ve learned somewhere along the line that what you “can” do and what other people allow you to do, are two different things.
At a hypermarket where I’m currently staying, thr security guard would NEVER let you out of the gate unless you use their plastic bags. We couldn’t just carry our SINGLE bottle of shampoo out, and we couldn’t bring and use our own shopping bag.
Plastic bag, or you’re not going home, babe..
July 12th, 2007 at 11:09 pm, skeet Says:
Well, Angie, Martin is such a sweetheart that I’m sure I’m not the only one who is smitten!
July 12th, 2007 at 11:12 pm, skeet Says:
You’re quite welcome Martin. It’s a great blog with a wonderful mission. I hope I did it justice.
I just discovered that I had an open tag in the second link, so nothing from there to the next paragraph was showing up. It’s corrected now and the razor and grocery bag statements make a bit more sense. Insert blushing icon here.
July 12th, 2007 at 11:16 pm, skeet Says:
Sheesh! That’s terrible, Pelf! My stores only care that you have the receipt, so I frequently refuse a bag if I’ve only got a few small items.
I forgot to mention in the post that my Safeway has a recycle bin for plastic bags (theirs or anyone else’s.) You can bring them back on your next trip and they’ll be used to make new plastic items. It’s a step in the right direction.
July 13th, 2007 at 8:22 am, Leigh Says:
I’d love to play your tuesday teaser, but I always forget to look. Do you have an e-mail/newsletter/notification thingy?
July 13th, 2007 at 8:49 am, skeet Says:
I don’t have an email notification system, Leigh, but it’s something I can look into. I know there are always a few people each week who post their frustrations because they missed the contest!
July 14th, 2007 at 5:56 am, Jewish T-shirts Says:
An inherent part of the problem lies in the packaging industry, which is a sub sector of the marketing industry. It’s rather sad that we are such magpies that we actually respect and revere products that are well ‘packaged’. In many cases, if this packaging were not present, we might realize that we don’t even need the item. Keep blogging, perhaps, in the long run, little bits and pieces of education will sway the course towards more sustainable activities.