Self Evaluation: Plastics Use

Blessings Darlings!

I use Earth Day as a time of evaluation and vow taking.  Two years ago my vow was about reducing my use of plastics. Evaluation (a few days before Earth Day, I admit) makes it clear I'm failing at this.

I've had some success at reducing styrofoam and #5 plastics that are brought into the house - because we can't afford Chinese take out any more (comes in #5 black plastic bowls with a translucent plastic lid) nor can we afford to eat out (leftover brought home in styrofoam plastic boxes).  OTOH many of our groceries still come into the house in plastic bags, because we fail to use the cloth bags.  Even at Aldi's, where we use bags from home, the bags we re-use are the plastic bags from other stores.

Implementing a system other than Gladware for refrigerator food storage has also been a failure.  I can't buy Pyrex replacements (which still have plastic lids) and I am afraid that if I DID use them I'd break them.  I drop things.  A lot.  And we have regular 'landslides' in our freezer and refrigerator.

I'm going to keep looking for metal bowls of all sizes at garage sales, in the hopes that they will be useful for fridge storage.  I would be able to use aluminum foil to cover them with ... not that the mining and refining of THAT is not destructive to the environment, just that aluminum foil can be recycled more readily than plastic wrap can be.  Like - it can be recycled at all.