Plastic Free Challenge: Week 3

For the month of July I signed on to the Plastic Free July challenge.  The idea is to avoid all single-use plastic that just goes straight into the trash, and what you can't avoid keep for a "dilemma bag" and display.

Here are the results of the third week of the challenge, minus the plastic trash that was generated by my family eating at the local summer fair this week.  I just didn't much care to keep the dirty forks and cups in my purse for hours just to bring home and wash later for display.  I think we used three disposable forks and two straws and plastic lids and one snow cone cup on that day, and the rest was paper (which was collected for compost at the fair).

So my family of four made this much plastic trash this week:

1. The vacuum bag that we sealed one of our home-raised turkeys in last fall for freezing.  When we thawed out and ate the bird this week the bag became trash.
2. One bag that held cotton candy (from that day at the fair).
3. The plastic seal from a tub of salsa (I can get salsa in glass jars, but we really like this local salsa company that packages its fresh salsa in plastic tubs.  Local, fresh, and organic or packaged in glass?)
4. The end of the plastic wrap on a brick of cheddar cheese (the rest of the wrapper will probably appear in next weeks photo).
5. A package of mini-marshmallows that were used in a chemistry lab by my son, building molecules out of marshmallows and toothpicks.
6. The packaging from a new set of headphones I bought this week.
7. Two plastic lids from sodas.
8. Four plastic coffee straws that I didn't notice my kids sticking into their reusable cups at the coffee shop.  They really like to drink out of straws, so I've started saving and washing out straws, but these little coffee ones are too small to really wash out.
9. Four bags from pasta we cooked this week.

In the spirit of full confession, my trash this week also contained two styrofoam carry out containers and two of those weird foil/plastic/I don't know what this is bags that chips come in.

Overall, though, I do think we are reducing how much trash we put out, and it's definitely making us think about it more.