Why I give a shit about poverty

There’s a certain stigma about “doing good”. (At least I feel there is; is it just me?) There’s something unbearably “holier than thou” when it comes to talking about “giving” and “doing more”. It invokes, for me, the image of Minnie Driver playing that over-privileged naïve girl in An Ideal Husband, going on about the charity she’s involved with in one breath and the boys she’s been flirting with in another.

Live 8 and other such fundraisers, featuring celebrities with oh-so serious expressions speaking in hushed tones and slow-motion shots of starving children with Enya on the soundtrack are so easy to roll ones eyes at. They’ve become so common that they’re cliché.

Maybe I’m just insensitive. I know this sounds disgustingly Ayn Rand-ian of me, but in high school, I was involved in community service activities not because I actually cared, but because they would look good on my college application—and I have a sneaking suspicion that that’s how most people felt. After college, I felt that it was rich people who should give—not me. I felt that my living conditions (at the time, I was living with my parents) were the bare minimum of what was humane (lol), and I was struggling to maintain even that. It was the people with ten houses scattered all over the world who should scale down a bit for fuck’s sake.

I related all of this to my step-uncle, who changed my entire perspective in a single conversation. (The next time you think arguing with someone is pointless, who knows: you may be laying the seeds for future ruminations and profound change.) He told me about a documentary about two different high schools: a private school with the wealthiest kids in the city and a public school in one of the poorest neighborhoods.

Although revealing how “the other half lives”—juxtaposing, say, rich kids getting upset about their cars with the poor kids coping with violence—was fascinating in and of itself, the real kicker was the documentarists’ decision to show footage of the poor kids to the rich kids. Even though the rich kids were legitimately touched by their plight, the documentarists asked what the rich kids would be willing to give up in order to rectify the inequality between the two groups, and the rich kids answered, “Nothing.” Not their Mercedes, not their houses, not their private school education. And their reason? Because other people were so much richer than them.

Hm.

I’m sure you’ve seen that thing online (The Global Rich List) where you enter your yearly income and it tells you what percentile of wealth you’re in compared to the rest of the world. And of course, you look at it and marvel at how you’re actually in the top 3% when you feel so poor, and wonder how billions of people could possibly live on less than $3000 dollars a year, let alone $300, and you pity them for a second, but then you go ahead and buy your lunch for $15 and make your car payment of $232 and buy that $75 pair of jeans because you simply have nothing to wear. And why not? Everyone else is doing it. Everyone has a car. No one’s walking around with holes in their clothes. If we did, we’d look stupid. We have to keep up with our peers, right? And that’s exactly the line of thinking of those rich high school kids.

So I started asking myself that question: what would I give up in order to rectify this vast inequality of wealth that clearly exists between me and much of the world? And I began demanding of myself that the answer cannot be “nothing”. If 97% of the world can go without X, then I should be able to go without X, too. I’ve started to buy as little as possible of anything not completely necessary to my survival and donating everything left over to charity. (If any of you had started to wonder why I’ve started to look like crap, this is why.)

I know that thinking about how badly off people are to gain “perspective” is cheesy, but I think it’s less so when it has practical consequences: thinking about how there are places even in my very own city where dozens of people live in the same house makes me a little more forgiving of my apartment, which I share with a roommate and is in close quarters with my ten neighbors. It gives me less of an impulse to run out and get a one-bedroom apartment as soon as I can afford it, or that I should even find a smaller or shittier apartment so I can free up more income to give.

Maybe this sounds a little like “hair shirt” charity, like I’m taking it a little too far, and I know it’s not exactly a tantalizing selling point (definitely not brought up on Live 8—“Get a shittier apartment!!! WOO!!”), but it’s the one that works for me. For me to think that I should get the most I can afford is a logical fallacy that will only perpetuate never, ever giving to others, no matter how rich I get.

To me, this has nothing to do with sympathy or sob stories or Enya; it has to do with fairness (which, luckily, makes it much less goody-two-shoes). Just as it’s not fair that some people travel all over the world, live in lavish mansions and go yachting around the Mediterranean while I have to work at a tedious, mind-numbing job every day, it’s not fair that I actually have my own apartment and my own car while billions of people all over the world live in shacks and eke out a meager existence doing hard manual labor. No matter what Ayn Rand says, I find all of this tremendously unfair.

And yet, it occurred to me that just giving wasn’t enough. I’d heard somewhere that tons of aid to Africa, for instance, gets siphoned off to warlords who use it to buy palaces and weapons and shit. Why the hell do we let that happen?! What are the root causes and systemic problems that prevent the alleviation of extreme poverty in spite of billions of dollars of aid? I decided to solve global poverty right there and headed to the font of all knowledge: Wikipedia.

It was there that I discovered something I’m pretty sure I’d never heard of before: that many impoverished countries—the same ones we’re told to send all this aid to—are billions of dollars in debt to the World Bank, the IMF, and random private creditors. Something like half of every dollar in aid goes towards paying off this debt. It’s like, excuse me?? I’m supposed to give money to these people so it can end up in some banker’s wallet?? Or I’m supposed to help these people so they can keep working on their farms to make money to give to these bankers?? How is that any different from medieval kings living off the sweat of their serfs? In a horrifying twist on the gap between rich and poor, some of those same fat cats tooling around in their yachts aren’t just hoarding all their wealth: their wealth actually COMES FROM the very poor people they should be giving to!!

Lest you think that it’s the poor people’s fault they got into debt in the first place and that they shouldn’t get out of their obligation to pay it off, there are multiple reasons why this is untrue, which I won’t bother to delineate here, but which are thoroughly explained at the website of Jubilee USA, one of the primary organizations campaigning to have all this debt canceled. But really, it’s common sense: bankruptcy as a legal concept exists for a reason: so that people won’t be slaves to their debt their entire lives, but can rather start again from a clean slate. Why isn’t there an international equivalent, by which we can grant the same thing to countries, particularly those whose citizens are suffering so intensely??

So forget Live 8. Forget Bono. Forget even the Red Cross for a moment. Getting these ridiculous loans canceled is the FIRST STEP towards ANY progress in the third world. Anything else will just serve as a band-aid—a badly needed band-aid, but a band-aid nonetheless.

These are the lines of thinking that get me to take action: justice and common sense. It’s not that I have no sympathy; of course I do. That part in Seven Samurai when the guy picks up the rice grain by grain with a quivering hand because they’ll starve to death without it makes me desperate to run to the kitchen and get him a big ol’ bag of rice. And stuff like that is happening all over the world. Right now. But if I’m not willing to make sacrifices and challenge what I deem a “necessity”, sympathy is all I will have to give.

Moreover, the whole situation is so complicated that it demands more than just throwing money at it; it’s about figuring out the best angle, determining what the roots of the problems are so we can get the biggest bang for our buck and our time.

And there’s nothing goody-two-shoes about that.

How I responded to my health insurance company's survey

(I'm SURE you guys are sick of me talking about health insurance reform, but unfortunately I won't be sick of it until it's DONE.)

My health insurance company, CIGNA, actually asked for feedback today! One of their non-multiple-choice questions was: "Please tell us how we could improve our service." And so I did indeed take a moment to tell them. Here was my answer.

Tip #1: You could include information as to whether you cover yearly physicals or not CLEARLY in your policy materials.

Maybe you already do include such information, but I read through the ENTIRE policy AND website and could not find anything on it, so either it's not even there, or it's worded in such fine print or so vaguely that it's easily overlooked. This is what necessitated the call in the first place.

Tip #2: You could cover yearly physicals.

Your motto starts: "Think well. Live well." Presumably, being a health insurance company, this refers to the health of your customers. And presumably you "care" about the health of your customers, since your other motto is "A business of caring." Well, did you know that preventative care is crucial in preserving one's health? Doctors recommend yearly check-ups in order to catch problems right when they start so they don't have a chance to become major problems. I'm suspicious that you actually may not "care" whether or not your customers catch health problems before they become debilitating or, god forbid, fatal.

Tip #3: Your customer service representatives could admit to the real reason behind not covering yearly physicals.

I actually said to your customer service representative, "What ever happened to preventative care?" And she merely responded, like an automaton with only pre-programmed answers, that you could "only cover what the policy covers," which obviously doesn't even answer the question. The correct answer is: "We don't cover yearly physicals because if we did, it would eat into our profit margin." I would have been much more satisfied had I gotten the truth from your "representative" rather than a canned answer.

Cut to: the poor survey statistics person who has to read this. They roll their eyes, thinking "not another one" and click "delete".

Some thoughts from tabling at the Hollywood Farmers Market

1. Know who your representatives are!!!

I swear to god, of the thirty or so people I asked who their congressperson is, only ONE knew!!! I’m sure that anyone reading this doesn't fall into this category, but it’s a great wake-up call: we need to make sure our friends and family are cognizant of the people that run our country!!! The powers that be! The people who determine YOUR FUTURE!!

People, we should be bitching to our reps far too often not to know who they are—let alone remembering who the hell we VOTED FOR. A couple years ago, I bitched to mine like EVERY DAY about wanting to see Bush impeached. And these days I'm bitching every single day about health care reform. There’s gotta be SOMETHING on the federal level that infuriates you and that you’d like to see changed. Look up who to bitch to, and do it!

2. I wish crazy people didn't have the right to vote.

Okay, I know this will never happen and should never happen because it’s a damn slippery slope, but seriously, I cannot believe that lunatics actually have the right to vote. You come across them every now and then when you’re canvassing. Today, some crazy lady said she didn’t support health care reform because “Obama himself hasn’t read the whole bill!” and “No one read all of NAFTA! And look at the mess we’re in now! You know who did read all of NAFTA? Ralph Nader!” (I walk away.) This woman, I’m sure, has the right to vote, and unfortunately, probably exercises that right.

Here’s another gem from a guy I got into a conversation with: “You dealt with all three of my alter egos really well!”

Can there be, like, a crazy test before one gets to vote? Actually, there should be a basic knowledge test, too. I know, it’ll never happen, but it’d sure be nice...

A few questions for a girl I reached while canvassing for health insurance reform.

I almost didn’t write this. I thought, it’s only going to prolong my rage, no one’s gonna read it or if they do, they'll just be fellow Democrats already anyway, I have so much else to do, etc. etc. But at the end of the day, rage won.

So, as some of you may know, Obama's campaign's grassroots efforts, which did so much to get him elected have persisted into his presidency in order to garner support for his various issues--probably the most significant of which thus far is the current one: his push for health care reform. This being one of the issues I am most passionate about, I have joined the fight.

For instance, I started literally been e-mailing my representatives every single day about it. And finally, this evening, I was able to force myself to do a little phone canvassing--I’m pretty introverted, so doing so always petrifies me--and sat down with my cell and my phone list and started dialing.

Most of them were wrong numbers, mercifully, but strangely enough, the last call, just before my phone died, was the one where I actually got to speak to someone.

Kimberly. 21.

The purpose of these calls, as stated in the phone banking materials, is firstly to see if they agree with the three principles of Obama’s intended reforms. Kimberly agreed to the first two, but after I read the third, she demurred.

The third is: “Ensure that quality, affordable health care is available to all Americans.”

She responded that she couldn’t agree with that because “...I went to private school....”

At this point, I assumed she was gonna say something like, “but a lot of my friends went to public school, and it sounded awful,” i.e. things run by the government are crappy.

However, she continued: “...and I didn’t like that my dad had to pay for [no no, please don’t tell me she’s gonna say what I think she’s gonna say....] so many people to go to public school.”

I have a few questions for you, Kimberly.

1. Really? You don’t even believe in public school? What are you, an anarchist? Even the most dyed-in-the-wool Republicans believe in public school. The argument is so over that I’m not even going to waste my time defending fucking public school here. Does this mean you don’t even believe in charity, since that, too, would just be your “dad’s money going to other people”?

2. Your family was affluent enough to send you to private school. You escaped having to go to public school, with all its gangs and shitty teachers. And you’re begrudge the unwashed masses for getting even that???

3. What EXACTLY do you wish you’d been able to spend the extra money that Daddy instead paid in taxes? I figure it must be something like a yacht or a pony: since your family was affluent enough to pay for private school--for roughly the cost of a new car per year--I figure they had the basics like a mansion, a Mercedes, a maid, etc. already covered.

Wait, hold still, let me yank that silver spoon out of your mouth and make you THINK for a second with that over-privileged brain of yours--which is worth about 12 new BMWs more than mine. I'll try to ascend to your level in order to explain taxes. You know that country club you’re a member of? Well, Daddy pays a very expensive membership fee for you. And you know how nice the country club is? With its flowers and pristine pool and tennis courts? Well, all the members’ fees pay for all that. See, those country club membership fees, well, they’re kind of like taxes. Taxes pay for roads and schools and the police and such so that we have a nice, civilized society.

Here’s another thing that’s similar between your country club’s membership dues and taxes: they are not a la carte. You can’t tell your country club, well, I hate swimming, so I’m never gonna use the pool, so you can just deduct that from my membership fee, kthxbye! It doesn’t work like that, honey. So just because your parents elected of their own free will not to put their kids in public school system doesn’t mean Daddy gets to opt out of paying for it. Because ironically enough--sadly enough both for you and for them--the people who are incapable of paying for it are the ones who need it the most—the people who can’t afford the ritzy education you got to have. (btw, there's a great website I found recently of rich people who actually WANT to be taxed more for social services because they actually understand this concept: Wealth for the Common Good)

Obviously, I really, really, really wish I’d been able to say all these things to her, but as anyone who’s gone canvassing knows, you’re advised not to argue and instead to just move on--i.e. that your energy is best spent finding the people who DO agree with you. So instead of all the above, I simply said cheerily, "should I put you down as a 'no' then?" And she said yes.

But I think that at some level, we also need to educate each other, to maintain a dialogue to continually challenge and push our beliefs. Which is, I suppose, why I'm writing this after all: putting my few drops in the bucket for that cause so that by the time a canvasser does roll around, the people on the other end of the line or on the other side of the door don’t spout off like fucktards.

A Glossary for Apartment Hunters

When you first start apartment hunting, you quickly pick up on the fact that there is a very specific terminology associated with this niche of life. All are euphemistic. They were almost certainly delliberately chosen by landlords and realtors to evoke a glamorous image instead of whatever disadvantage it represents. Some of these euphemisms represent a small, incidental component of that image, but in some cases, they bear absolutely no resemblance.

I know, landlords in the business of selling apartments, so I'll begrudge them the attempt to slap these random labels on, but come on. Once everyone knows what these terms really mean, they become just as undesirable, don't they?

Anyway, I've become so fluent in apartment-rental-ese that I thought I'd share my knowledge. Well, okay, my bitter analysis, to be more precise.


Bachelor: This, to me, is the most insidious of them all. The term evokes a swingin' pad, as though the apartment comes furnished with a leather couch and a rotating bed. But it in fact means "this apartment doesn't include a kitchen. Hope you have a hot plate!" WHAT?? Oh... because bachelors don't cook...? Okay.... I'd like to question the humaneness (or usefulness, or desirability...) of not having a kitchen, but okay, go ahead and bother to continue making apartments like that. It kind of sounds like a sexist remnant from the 50's, but sure, let's keep calling it that. After all, it's so much shorter than "no kitchen".

Loft: Once again, this evokes, I dunno, a majestic, high-ceilinged place, like the actual lofts at the Brewery, where they have such high ceilings so they can bring in massive canvasses. And while lofts actually do have high ceilings, what this translates to in practice is that there's a staircase in the apartment that leads up to the actual "loft", i.e. a tiny patch of floor that most places rent out as a bedroom, even though there's no door and the "wall" is in fact no higher than a banister--i.e. absolutely no privacy.

The only way I can see this being desirable whatsoever--and probably the original purpose--is if it's a one bedroom apartment, i.e. there's no need for privacy, so it's more like a studio (that term's coming up soon) that happens to have an elevated sleeping area. But to have bedrooms AND a loft?? I don't get it, other than that people are desperate to have a lower rent--the same reason why people are willing to rent out or live in the space that's supposed to be the living room. *shudder*

Luxury Apartment: Anything that isn't a complete shithole. Take a look around your apartment. Are there no cracks in the paint all over your walls? Is your carpet actually fastened to the floor? Are the stairs leading up to the front door not crumbling in decay? Then heavens to betsy, thank your lucky fucking stars: you live in a luxury apartment.

I'm assuming that landlords are using this term in a very global-conscious way, i.e. they've all spent some time in the third world, where anything a step above a corrugated metal-roofed shack is a luxury. Wow, that just put my apartment hunting--yea, my whole life--in perspective; thanks, landlords.

Patio: You know, call me old fashioned, but when I hear the word "patio", I think of, well, an actual patio. I suppose my platonic ideal of a patio is something like a wide area with lawn chairs and whatnot. I think there's a certain point whereby as the square footage decreases, it ceases to become a patio and becomes nothing more than a ground-floor balcony, just as a room becomes a closet if it reaches a certain size. And yet I have now gone to two places where the "patio" is nothing more than a small balcony-sized patch of concrete cordoned off with a dilapidated wooden fence. Sorry honey. That is not a patio.

Studio: The glamorous image this term inaccurately evokes is, of course, an artist's studio. The real definition, of course, is that there is no separate living room, which sucks almost as much as not having a kitchen. I cannot for the life of me figure out how "studio" became synonymous with "no living room". My only guess is that these kinds of places were always inhabited by starving artists...?? Anyway, thanks to the appropriation of this term, while you're having dinner or parties in your bedroom, you can fancy yourself a daring young artist in the middle of Paris. Put up some half-finished paintings on easels to complete the illusion. (For anyone who thinks I'm being snobby, I can't even afford a studio.)

[International travel note!: In England, studios and bachelors are called bedsits. I haven't come up with any convincing reasons as to why. Because all you have room for is a bed to sit on?]

Tandem parking: Hahahaha. Oh, the joys of tandem parking. I was woken up nearly every morning at 6:30am to move my FUCKING car for WEEKS--for a roommate who in our initial interview insisted the tandem parking was never a big deal since she could always find street parking when she came home from work. And she then proceeded to NEVER park on the street. (But as some of you know, this is the LEAST of the problems I've had with my roommate.)

When I initially heard the term, I thought it meant the parking spaces were side-by-side or something. (Shows how great my vocabulary is...) But alas, it does not. The term should really be "one long parking space where two cars can fit, so you'll have to keep asking your roommate to move their car." What is the point of this?!?! You may as well not even pretend you have two parking spaces. You don't. You have one. These things should be BANNED. I will never. EVER. EVER. Rent a place with this monstrosity again. I don't care HOW beautiful or inexpensive the place is. (Although I suppose it also could be yet another sign that I should give up my car...)

Townhouse: This evokes the image of, I dunno, a cute little house with wood sidings. Not in the country, not in the city, but in a quaint little town, and it's distinguished from your country house, where you "summer". But no. The true definition of this term is... wait for it.... It has a staircase that goes to an upper floor. And I don't mean the way a mansion has two floors--I mean even within one APARTMENT, there are two floors. I took a wild, stupid guess as to how this came about, and according to Wikipedia, my hunch was correct: in "town"--i.e. any area with a relatively dense population--space is more restricted, so landlords found a way to squeeze even more people onto their plot of land. For instance, I suppose my old dilapidated apartment in Berkeley was a "townhouse" because there were a couple bedrooms in the ATTIC--a space which otherwise would not have extracted much more money from tenants.

But even crazier, the rental ads emphasize "townhouse" like it's a good thing!! The only positive spin I can put on this is that you'll get some random exercise into your day.


Of course, in addition to this specific terminology, there's a whole litany of other types of "rental ad speak", such as the over-usage of the word "adjacent". It's not Pico-Robertson--it's "Beverly Hills adjacent". Yet, strangely, absolutely NOTHING is "Palms adjacent". Interesting; I didn't know Palms was an island. And EVERYTHING is near the Grove. And many ads say things like "minutes away from Santa Monica and downtown." WHAT??? Are they assuming I have a helicopter?

I know I must have forgotten some... If any others come to mind, post them in the comments. :)

Conservative bias in my brother's government textbook

This weekend, my brother tried to pawn off on me his old government textbook from this last semester (not the one pictured), but of course I refused (wtf made him think I would want an old government textbook?). Later, he happened to mention that he didn’t want to keep it because it seemed to have a strong conservative bias. Now shocked and fascinated, I leapt over to him and the book, begging for an example where the bias was noticeable, as bias of any kind is blasphemous to the entire idea of a textbook.

The following are a few excerpts that exhibit this bias, which I was pretty surprised to find were as strong as my brother purported:

from “How a Bill is Passed”:

“First, a Democrat suggests something retarded. This idea, or bill, then goes to committee, where Republicans try to make it a little less retarded.”

from the glossary:

“Affirmative Action: something the Democrats came up with as a way to suck off their minority constituents.”

from “Prayer in School”

“This is a wonderful opportunity for children to express their faith in the Lord, but the Democrats, who worship Satan, have been trying to do away with this time-honored tradition, since whenever a prayer is uttered in their vicinity, they experience the sensation of acid having been thrown in their ears.”

I was, understandably, immensely offended and horrified that the school would allow such a textbook, so I’m thinking of writing them a letter in protest.

My "Show Us Your Trash Challenge" Results!

On Fake Plastic Fish, one of the life-greening blogs I’m addicted to, Beth, the blogger, threw down the gauntlet and ordered everyone to save their plastic for a week-—not a challenge to use less plastic than normal, but to gauge exactly what “normal” is for us at the moment.

In my smug hubris, after weeks of trimming away plastic in my life, I was sure that my pile of plastic after the end of the week would at least somewhat resemble Beth’s—-i.e. a few plastic windows from envelopes, maybe a random plastic bottle from pre-uber-green days—but I was shocked to find that I was compiling tons of random things.

But, of course, this is the whole point of this exercise: to realize what areas in particular we have left to improve on.


3 of those tiny coffee creamer things
I usually keep milk (that comes in a glass bottle) at work for my coffee—for environmental reasons but also because it tastes so much better—but I had run out the day before and gave into a craving.

“Inspected by” sticker
I just bought a Kleen Kanteen-type water bottle (which has a plastic lid and rubber padding on the bottom, btw), and this sticker was on the underside. At least the tag on it was made out of recycled paper, I guess.

Toilet paper wrapping
My roommate insists on getting this particular type of toilet paper—which isn’t made of recycled content—and which comes in a large wrapping of plastic, and within that huge thing of plastic, every 4 rolls are packaged in their own individual plastic wrappings. Sigh. When I went to get a new roll, I took the last of a set of four, and thus was left with the remaining plastic.

I suppose I could buy my own recycled, non-plastic toilet paper, and add that to the list of items we have two sets of around the house because of my green endeavors (e.g. she has liquid soap, I have bar soap).

Not depicted: straw
The old story, one which I had not yet encountered as my anti-plastic self, as I hardly ever go out on the town: I ordered a soda and totally didn’t see the bartender throw in the straw. I thought about returning it, but I was like, she’s probably gonna throw it out anyway, so I may as well take it. And then I forgot to take the straw for my stash. I’m clearly new at this saving plastic thing.

Milk cap
So, I drink a LOT of milk, due to my addictions to tea, coffee, hot chocolate, and cereal. I buy the kind that comes in a returnable glass bottle (the dairy reuses them!!), but they come with (of course) a plastic cap. I wonder, really, if the amount of plastic in that rather large cap is the same amount of plastic used for coating on a carton and the plastic tops cartons use these days.

I would drink homemade soymilk, almond milk or hemp milk instead—and actually, each of these is lovely in cereal—but they’re just wretched in tea and coffee. So until I get a cow, I suppose I could cut down on the amount of tea, coffee, and hot chocolate I drink, which aren’t very localtarian anyway. (No coffee plantations in Southern California? Oh.) That, however, is going to take a LOT more willpower than I needed for switching from paper towels to cloth. I wouldn’t mind, however, getting a hemp milk maker for cereal (if hemp seeds don’t come in plastic, rrr).

Bread bag
I’d gone without bread for a long time because I’d been on a more paleo-type diet for fitness reasons, but now that I’m going to swing more vegan for ecological reasons, I figure I should probably get back into bread, or else my diet may lack sufficient variety.

But with bread comes plastic—unless you make your own, of course. But I didn’t want to go through the trouble of getting a bread maker and making bread until I proved to myself that I was actually going to eat it. But I did (every day, actually), so I think I will get a bread-maker after all. So we can check this one off the list for the future.

5 Brush Picks
My dentist suggested these as an alternative to flossing, which I hate, and they work just as well. I’m using them until I run out and then switching to a metal, rubber-tipped gum stimulator, which works just as well.

Kashi cereal bag
I’ve started buying cereal in bulk at my local co-op (the “hippie store” as my brother calls it, haha), but late one night I was starving with nothing to eat. The hippie store is all the way across town, not to mention closed by that time, so I walked a block to the local Ralphs and bought my favorite cereal. I gotta stock up on the non-plastic hippie store stuff for such"emergencies".

Hydrogen peroxide mouthwash
Geez, this list keeps getting bigger and bigger!!! I bought this at the hippie store as a more natural alternative to regular mouthwash, but notice that it’s ALL plastic. I think I read somewhere that it's impossible to find hydrogen peroxide that comes in anything else.

I don’t even think I really need mouthwash, but hydrogen peroxide is also a more environmentally friendly alternative to bleach and antiseptics. So… should I count this as an excusable use of plastic?

Yogurt container
Ironically, I bought this so that I could make my own yogurt so I could eat yogurt without plastic. I guess you have to break a few eggs… Anyway, I should never have to buy a container of yogurt again… unless I’m unsuccessful in making yogurt that doesn’t suck….

Sunkist orange sticker
I did not buy this orange. My mom bought this orange, and it had a little sticker on it, as conventional oranges are wont to have.

Envelope window
While I returned the rest of my junk mail, this contained my absentee ballot for the California “special” election, and I couldn’t very well return that.

Not depticted: Plastic spoon
This came from a similar situation to that of the straw. I am hardly ever in this position: there was ice cream passed out at work at a birthday party, and before I realized what I was doing, I had reached for a plastic spoon.

Jam screw top
This was for the pb&j’s I made with the bread mentioned above. Most of this is metal, but I assume that there’s plastic under that there top. I know canning is the answer to this one, but that would only save some glass—not plastic, as even in canning, you’re supposed to toss the small circle tops (which have a ring of rubber on them) when you’re done with them.

However, reusing glass is always good, so I intend to getting into canning as soon as I can find a used canning machine…

Lactaid seal
I didn’t buy this myself, but I drank a lot of milk at my mom’s house, so I figured I was partially reponsible for it (I guess I should have taken the whole carton…). I would urge her to do some non-plastic alternative, but see the above milk dilemma…

Not depicted: Netflix seal cover thing and extra tyvek flap
If I were in any other industry but the entertainment industry, I’d be fine with canceling my Netflix subscription. But since I am, it’s like a duty to my career to watch as much as possible.

I will try to watch things more often on the internet or rent from the library or Blockbuster (although I think someone calculated that Netflix is actually more environmentally friendly than Blockbuster, in spite of the Tyvek), but sometimes Netflix is the literally only place you can find something.

Band-aid
I used this when I scratched a scab open. Is there such thing as non-plastic bandaids? Is the only alternative gauze wrappings? Will investigate.

Not depicted: Liter bottle of Squirt
I almost completely forgot this and did completely forget to save it for my pile o’ plastic (how convenient). My brother got it for me as a surprise, since I’d mentioned the week before that I loved Squirt. Yes, I drank the whole thing myself. Within an hour. :D


I’m not sure what the total weight of all this is, but I think it’s probably around 6oz. (I was only able to weigh my pile three-fourths into the week, which at the time clocked in at 3.5oz.) But I figure that even if I were a complete saint, I still would have had at least 1 or 2 ounces.

Here’s a useful breakdown for me, in order to figure out why these things happened:

Number of items used in the pursuit of cutting out plastic: 2
Unintentional: 4
Things to change: 5
(Seemingly) unavoidable: 5
Using up from pre-anti-plastic days: 1

As I mentioned, I sucked at this way more than I thought I would (no guilt, Beth! Just the truth!)—and I am now in awe of Beth’s weekly tallies, which typically weigh like 0.5 oz, but let’s look at how much plastic I WOULD have had—PER DAY!!—had I not gone through my my anti-plastic efforts:

-2 plastic wrappers from Balance bars
-plastic-coated hot chocolate packet (let’s not comment on my diet at the time, shall we…)
-plastic packet of coffee grounds
-plastic to-go container
-1 or 2 soda cans (Jesus, my diet was crap)

And this is just the stuff I remember. So I know for sure that I’ve greatly improved in the last couple months.

But as I am not yet at saintly status, I have my new to-do list cut out for me:
1. Try to find paper-wrapped recycled toilet paper
2. Remember to ask not to get a straw
3. Get a bread maker
4. See if I can get hemp seeds in anything other than plastic
5. Cut down on coffee, tea, and hot chocolate (ha!)
6. Stock up on non-perishable food from hippie store
7. Use the library more often for film rentals
8. Check out bandaid alternatives

I think it’d be really interesting to do this exercise again after having made all these changes to compare the difference...