Day Seven

The first sunny day in a long while...and we had a much needed chore day. A day for laundry and cleaning and getting a general tidy back to the home. Being able to open all the windows to let the fresh air in was wonderful!

Since there was no shopping to do, the only plastic acquired by one of us today was the plastic lid and straw of Che's drink - lucky guy was taken to a Canucks game for the grand finale of his spring break! Too bad they lost in over-time, but it was a great game to see live (Mark listened in online, but it was a pay-per-view...how is that accessible to all families? anyways...)

So...final tally...7 days down and 3 successful at acquiring no new plastics.

Even with it being a generally lazy vacation style week for us, and we didn't really need to shop for as much as I thought we might...we still were only 43% successful at acquiring no new plastics!

Our advantages are living within walking distance (for me, walking distance is within an hours walk...I understand this is not realistic to everyone's lifestyle or neighbourhood choices) of a lot of fresh and local options for fruit and vegetables, and a few bakeries.

The challenges are having kids - everything for kids has at least some plastic, and most of it is packaging. Dairy and meat products are also a big challenge. With bulk buying, though it cuts down on a lot of packaging and is beneficial in many ways...because of health and safety regulations (and a lawsuit-happy culture) it is not possible at this time in my area...though I'm still looking into other options...to reuse your own containers to minimize waste.

I have many other thoughts reeling in my mind after this week, and after reflecting a while I'll have more to write about. I will continue to add my favorite tidbits here over the next while as we pull the report together. We've come across some pretty great stuff...good and bad.

Our timeline for the final report is a goal which might require more flexibility...my trip home to Ontario with Sasha is in 2 weeks - feels like tomorrow with all I need to do before we go!