Thursday, August 14, 2008  A Month Without Plastics  Over on the
BBC website, reporter Chris Jeavans is blogging about her August
challenge: to live a month without buying or accepting anything
wrapped in or made with plastic. Why? Because even though we're
all repeatedly implored to reduce, reuse and recycle, plastics
are still one of the most common things to make it into our
trash, our landfills, and our oceans. So she wanted to track
exactly how life would change if she gave up plastics - first,
of course, tracking how much plastics she and her family used
over the course of one month.  The numbers were surprising: 603
items, including:  * 36 carrier bags * 67 food packaging bags
and films such as bread bags, cheese wrappers (and a jumbo pack
of Maltesers!) * 23 polystyrene tea cups with lids and 24 coffee
cup lids * 15 fruit punnets and vegetable trays * 13 yoghurt
pots * 16 water bottles, 10 milk bottles, 7 juice bottles * Two
toothbrushes  Probably the least pretty aspect to my household's
waste at the