We took the boys to see 'Wall.E', the new Pixar movie and we all enjoyed it. When we were waiting to go into the theatre the boys noticed some kids had drink cups with a Wall.E figurine on top that came as part of a popcorn/drink deal. They became obsessed with these cups and kept asking if we could buy one.
I remember having a Ghostbusters t-shirt and an E.T. cup when I was a kid but I didn't feel bad about saying no. There are so many kid's movies coming out these days that you could go broke trying to keep up.
This started me off on a bit of a rant about licensed merch being a rip-off, how it targets kids, how it's all from China, it's wasteful tat, PLASTIC is the DEVIL! etc.
When I got home I decided to have a good look at my own sad state of plasticky affairs in the heart of our home, the kitchen.
We have quite a bit of plastic stuff in our kitchen. I do keep a load of glass jars to store our food in because we buy quite a bit from the bulk-bins at our local health food store.
We don't use plastic for heating food or drinks. I did do some research on plastics when I was pregnant but I won't preach here.
This is my inventory of kitchen plastic:
A plastic box holding toothpicks, a manuka honey jar, a hundreds and thousands jar, instant miso packets, tea bag wrappers, a bag of xanthan gum, Bic biros, Sharpies, plastic cutlery, measuring spoons, a gingerbread man cookie cutter, one of my Grandma's blue Tupperware containers, an icing nozzle, a vacuum wine saver, a red melamine mixing bowl, a melamine cheese board and kid's chopsticks.
Not shown here: 3 lighters, 1 roll of plastic wrap for covering bowls in the fridge, some plastic shopping bags that we use as bin liners, some bags of spices, a few packets of cereal, a silicon spatula, a lemon juice squeezer, an ice block container, a milk bottle, a strawberry punnet, some brie in glad wrap, 3 Decor cereal containers and a pepper grinder.
Not bad, Not great. Always room for improvement.
Things are packaged in plastic more and more these days which makes it hard to avoid. I would like to have even less plastic in my life but I'm sure it will only get worse with school lunches to prepare.
When I first heard about the plastic garbage patches floating in our oceans I was really shocked and I stopped buying as much disposable stuff as was possible I prefer to have things that are recycled or mean something to me. Most of my kitchen things are from the op shop or hand-me-downs from Mum and Grandma.
The hunt and glory of finding 'a treasure' while op-shopping gives me lots of satisfaction. I'm still looking for the ever elusive, un-chipped, glass lemon juice squeezer. My personal op-shopping holy grail.
