Plastic Challenge: Beth Terry, Week 24
Location:Oakland, California, United States
Name: Beth Terry
Week: 24
Personal Info:
I am the founder of MyPlasticfreeLife.com and have been collecting my plastic and attempting to live as plastic-free as possible since June of 2007.
See my previous years’ tallies at:
/category/beths-weeklymonthly-plastic-tallies/
List of plastic items REFUSED this week. (Yay!)
Airplane plastic food and beverage packaging. Brought my own travel mug and didn’t need snacks for a short flight from San Francisco to Denver for the LOHAS conference.
All other disposable plastic bags, packaging, and containers, etc.
Total items collected: 1
Total weight: .4 ounces
Items: Recyclable
None
Items: Nonrecyclable
1) Packing tape from case of Plastic-Free books.
What items can I easily replace with plastic free or less plastic alternatives?
None
What items would I be willing to give up if a plastic free alternative doesn’t exist?
None
What items are essential and seem to have no plastic-free alternative?
The packing tape on the cases of Plastic-Free books. All the cases are already taped up. See explanation of tape on book boxes here: http://myplasticfreelife.com/plastic-challenge/plastic-challenge-beth-terry-week-21/
What other conclusions, if any, can I draw?
It’s just so ironic that the more Plastic-Free books I sell, the more plastic tape I will have in my tally. But nothing can be done about it at this point.
There IS something you can do about the packing tape – buy the biodegradable stuff! There’s plenty of it. It will cost more, but ultimately what is that in respect of the environment? The only trick would be getting the people who pack your book to use it:
For example, a quite Google search found this:
https://www.greenstat.co.uk/storefront/Eco-Paper-Packing-Tape-P-122684
Hi, Cassandra. I explained this in a prior post, but I think I need to be clear every time I list this packaging tape. The issue is that the boxes are already taped up. The horse has left the barn. The train has left the station. All of the books that were printed have been packed up in boxes and sealed with plastic tape. So for this first printing, there is nothing I can do about the tape. If there is a second printing, I can request a different kind of tape. And believe me, I will! ;-)