When I began making my reusable organic cotton gift bags, grocery bags, and now produce bags my goal was to create things that work, look good and do good. Plastic reduction was always part of the intent for myself, and others through the business, but I really wasn’t seeing the whole picture. It is impossible, however, to set about trying to create a green business without taking a rather scary hard look at all aspects of my daily living. As mentioned in a previous post Blogspiration, Fake Plastic Fish has really inspired me to take my plastic reduction to the next level. The List she provided on her recent post is a wealth on knowledge and a must read for anyone trying to reduce their own plastic consumption. Now, I, and my family, would find it a bit difficult to go to the extremes that Beth has gone, but we could definitely do a little bit better to reduce what I consider our own wasteful plastic practices. My own little plan contains 4 parts:

• Replacing: Replace consumed products that come in plastic with ones that come in paper, fabric, glass, or even metal in some cases. No real sacrifice or work. Sometimes the alternative products are a few cents more, but no huge difference. I am hoping to add a lot to my list. Most of my business, and the work, falls under this category- creating reusable products made from responsible materials to replace disposable plastic ones….with a little style of course.
• Reducing: If it something that I have not found a great alternative for, such as the ever amazing ZipLock, I am trying to just reduce the amount I use through reuse. A veggie freezer bag is reused as a ……veggie freezer bag. (Now- DO NOT reuse bags that contained meat or dairy. That is a big ol’ belly ache waiting to happen. ) I like to keep sealed water bottle in the car in case of an emergency. For non-emergencies I can use a refillable bottles. Small adjustments can add up too.
• Ridding: This applies to things that do not have a non-plastic alternative that we can simply live without. Thanks to Burbanmom’s advice, we will not be shipping with any plastic, which I previously thought would be necessary. Also, I will not be buying any more disposable automatic banana peelers. (ok…that doesn’t really exist….I hope.)
• Reinventing: Sometimes you have to reinvent the wheel or at least reinvent how something gets done. Take bread for example, it all comes in a bag, can’t reuse one that has been eaten, eww, and can’t ban it from the house. I could get off my lazy bottom and bake it myself. I will be working my way up to these reinventions. This is the area where collective thinking…bloggie input…really comes in handy. So don’t be idea piggies! Share!

As always….everything is a work in progress. I would seriously love input on anything and everything discussed here in the blog. Business or personal……well, maybe not too personal. What second uses you find for your disposable automatic banana peeler are probably best kept between you and the bananas.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 9:47 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.