Nora Nickum

Fun month! It definitely got me thinking about many ways to reduce single-use plastic, beyond the ones that had already become automatic. I definitely plan to keep up the effort in the future. 

Picking up paperback books today as the plastic-free party favor for my daughter's birthday party this weekend!

Trying harder to remember to go to the farmers market every weekend, where I can get cherry tomatoes WITHOUT plastic packaging, and choose the greens that aren't pre-bagged. 

Sharing some relevant policy news... 
A few days ago, U.S. Senator Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and U.S. Representative Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) announced that they plan to introduce comprehensive legislation to tackle the plastic waste crisis this fall. 
The proposal includes a mix of phase-outs of certain single-use consumer products, an extended producer responsibility for those and other products, and deposit or charge requirements at the consumer retail level. 

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours volunteering with Bainbridge Island Zero Waste at the semi-annual Styrofoam recycling event. The owner of Bay Hay & Feed (an awesome store for gardening things, farm things, gifts, if you're ever on Bainbridge) then trucks the Styrofoam to Kent (on the trips that he does anyway, to avoid extra emissions).
At Styro Recycle, the pieces are fed into a densifier, which breaks them down, then melts them.  A paste comes out, like soft ice cream, and hardens into 50-pound blocks.  The blocks are sold off to manufacturers, who turn them into various plastic products, like picture frames, light switch and outlet covers, and crown molding.
Volunteering involves snapping the Styrofoam into smaller pieces so it doesn't take up as much space, sorting it into A grade and B grade, and bagging it up. Last time, we collected and processed 6,400 cubic feet of Styrofoam.
The photos show what was collected, snapped, and bagged in the first 4 hours of the 2-day event.

Bought cookies for a meeting today and specifically looked to minimize plastic packaging. Glad that this month is helping me keep that even more at the forefront of my mind!

Spent the weekend on San Juan Island and picked up a lot of plastic from the beach! 

I did a quick inventory of my trash bin this morning to see what the most common single-use plastic items are. 
Two actionable ones I found: 1) coffee bags (can easily switch to bulk coffee in paper bags to eliminate those). 2) An onion bag - can easily buy single onions with no bag. 

At the massive Rotary Auction/Rummage Sale on Bainbridge Island this weekend, I got some multi-use items (plastic or other) in order to at least get used things rather than new ones. I had been holding out on getting a watering can for our office plants until I could get one used. Check!