Recycling Makes Me Happy

I am vegan. And I try to eat raw food as much as possible. One of the most thrilling (yes, thrilling) things about a raw food diet is: there's no packaging waste! I love that! There might be a banana peel or an apple stem, but that stuff continues being extremely useful in the world of decomposition.

However, I do sometimes have packaging...as in a plastic pouch or deli-style container - see photo above - and whenever possible, I wash and use and re-use that plastic thing over and over again. I store my cut onions and tomatoes in them. Or I pack my lunch into various components in them. They stack beautifully in one's back pack and some styles of these containers, if sealed properly, are pretty much water tight. I save money by bringing lunch and by not buying any new plastic stuff...and best of all, it gives me the feeling of being a citizen of the world and a friend to nature. All that from re-using plastic containers!

Have you tried re-using the many forms of plastic packaging that come your way?

No Plastic Bag For Me, Today, Thank You

Yesterday at the first meeting of No Impact Week with Colin Beavan and Leah Mayor, one of the things that I agreed to be concious about this week was not buying anything with packaging. That is a the usual for me, being that I am a mostly raw vegan. In fact one of the most amazing things about living the raw vegan life is that you realize that you are definitely NOT contributing to landfills...... with your food at any rate. Jumping off from that point, I wanted to push the no impact envelope a bit. I went to the supermarket for some avocadoes and an onion. And I forgot to bring a cloth shopping bag with me. Yet I also refused a plastic "t-shirt" bag that the cashier packs your groceries into. With that change of habit, I had a new experience of avocadoes and onions. I saw that they each already come in their own bag, right off the vine/tree/earth clod. "How clever" I thought of that lovely old Mother Nature! I carried three avocadoes and one onion in my hands and there was one more avocado in my coat pocket. And I went home and had a nice salad.