Idle plastic thoughts

I was wondering what life would be like if you were to completely forego plastic. To get rid of all plastic items in your home and wider life.

I guess it would be a bit like the 19th century. Ok, most books and furniture could stay. The kitchen would be very different (but probably a lot nicer – nothing wrong with implements of china, steel, glass and wood). You’d stay fitter with your manual whisking, mashing and kneading.

A motor car would be out of the question. Even a bicycle would be tricky – have to get rid of those nice shimano components. In fact, there’s probably not a mountain bike in existence that’s plastic-free. Would have to be an old 10-speed. Oh, but what about the cable housings? Sorry, no gears. Single-speed, with a back-pedal brake.

It would be fun making the items you needed that couldn’t be got non-plastified. Of course, you would need a lot of nice, old-fashioned tools. (Perhaps you would have to make those… but with what?)

No CD’s… or cassettes… or LP’s. Possibly an old crystal set radio at a pinch (no bakelite knobs though). A top-notch piano with real wooden keys. And a fiddle perhaps (if you can get a bow without a plastic grip).

But my belly calls my thoughts back to the kitchen. You would have to buy food in a completely different way. Even bulk foods come in plastic. You could probably only do it if you were within cycling distance of a comprehensive bulk foods retailer, with nice, big hessian sacks of all sorts of goodies. Which would invariably be located in a big city…

I guess country life in the modern age comes at an environmental cost. But so does urban life. I know which I prefer.

By the way, there’s no danger that I’m about to go all silly about plastic. What would be the point of the exercise if I couldn’t blog about it every day?!

Pissed off with plastic, ticked off with tofu

I’ve been feeling disheartened with our recycling service since discovering that my county council ships (and sells) metal waste (and plastic? not sure) to China for recycling. The defense is that ships that bring goods to the UK from China would otherwise be returning empty.

But the goods in question are largely rubbish anyway. Even if they’re not complete rubbish, they still have a limited life-span. A large part of me just doesn’t want to condone the whole scheme, and I find myself chucking plastic wrappers in the general waste bin just to thumb my nose at the recycling policy. Sin of sins!!!

Since first thinking these dark thoughts, and experimenting with these reckless, devil-may-care acts of land-fillage, I’ve suddenly noticed just how much plastic we bring into our home. Now, I know this is not an original thought. But it’s been much on my mind lately.

I see a couple of categories of plastic consumption. There are the goods which we deliberately purchase for some purpose, some of which we could choose to buy in a material other than plastic (say, a dustpan and brush. Surely there are wooden-handled brushes out there… I’m not so sure about tin dustpans. But I would like a tin dustpan. I think it would be very satisfying to use.) Other items of course are harder to find in non-plastic materials. Like a laptop. Anyway, the second category is the slipstream of plastic that just comes with everything. Like a newspaper, or a selection of cheeses from the market, or even a bloody packet of tofu.

And it’s this last one that’s got me thinking. Tofu is not a great food. Soybeans are not easily digested unless fermented. Pulverised soybean with chalk added for textural integrity is not the best thing to put in your body.

So, I’m leaning to tempeh. But in keeping with my culture-loving (and plastic-hating) habits of late, I’m tempted to try making it. A little research indicates I will have to purchase the fungus to start it off (and possibly keep purchasing to carry on making the tempeh, unless I can find a way of perpetuating the culture. More research required).

Anyway, it’s gotta be worth a shot. The bought stuff is even more plastic-wrapped than tofu.