Hello everyone!

Well we have been super slack with the blog of late......(in fact i don't know off-hand what number day we are even on!) oops... but not slack with the challenge. I guess it has just become normal routine now that it is not so much of a 'challenge' any more. Which means success! Its like when you learn a new language and then get to the point where you stop translating things and just talk and understand them naturally. hmm, I don't actually speak a 2nd language, but I have been told that is what happens!

We have had to compromise sometimes, for example, we needed cotton buds which usually are made up of a plastic stick with the two cotton ends, but I did find some wooden alternatives, but in a plastic bag.. I have learnt that you can't always be 100% satisfied, but choosing the better option is still effective.

I (Ceire) went on holiday to Melbourne last week and it was great. So much to see and do, and a pretty forward-thinking city. I bought a couple of non-plastic things while I was there, I have to admit... but still tried my best to stick to the challenge. Guy visited South Africa for 2weeks and did pretty well, taking his own bag when he went out clothes shopping, and made sure most of the gifts he brought back were non-plastic.

I think there is about 25days to go, and I have been making some predictions on how life will be after this 100 days is over. We will definitely stick to buying paper-wrapped products when it is easy to choose it as the alternative, and doing this has certainly enlightened us to products that are available.
We will go out and buy cheese for sure, miss that, although cream cheese is a good substitute -we haven't been organised enough to coordinate with Taste Nature on getting some with our own container.
I will still buy pick'n'mix in the paper mushroom bags, even if check-out chicks give me weird looks. And I will still encourage others to reduce their plastic use.
We will definitely continue to bake our own bread too.
Just remember if its not a number 1 or 2 plastic (recyclable), (or a bio-plastic) it most likely continue to exist almost forever! We can stop adding to the landfill, ocean litter and reduce our consumption of oil if we just change a few little habits, which as it turns out is not that difficult :)

Some more pics coming soon

Day 46

Here's some pics of the products we have switched to.

Day 44

Yay! I remembered about Philidelphia cream cheese.... it comes in a foil block in a cardboard box. So yesterday I bought some and made yum creamy tomato pasta. It has made my week to find a dairy product that is not in plastic!
And.. the package design is brilliant. They have used all faces, including the inside of the box for handy hints and recipes, so I guess you could even keep them filed on your recipe shelf for future reference. Mmmm cream cheese.

I can't believe we are almost halfway. It is definitely becoming second nature - both of us (separately) bought TimTams as a gift for overseas relatives and then we were talking about it today how we both felt like we were being really naughty and wrong by buying something in plastic. So this makes me wonder if after the challenge will we be riddled with eco-guilt every time we pick up a plastic product, knowing that we haved lived without them and that there is most likely a better alternative..??

I definitely want other people to try this, even for a week? If you decide to, let me know how it goes.

More photos soon :)

Day 40!

Helloooo
Whoops it has been a while since we last wrote. Busy busy!
Things are going well. It has gotten a bit harder recently as everything we had that was from pre-challenge has now run out, so we are truely living plastic-free.
We took our usual trip to the Farmer's market on Saturday, and I have to say I was quite disappointed to see more and more store holders pre-paking their wares in horrible plastic bags! Even the potato man who usually uses these great tough brown paper bags has swapped half his stuff to plastic, and our usual stall had 'conveniently' packaged up bags of vegetables. Boo!
So we only ended up buying silverbeet and half a pumpkin since everything else we wanted was wrapped. Seems a bit ironic that the more sustainable shopping option actually isn't.
We just want loose veges like in the supermarket, is that too much to ask? don't think you grow those plastic bags now do you..?

We also shopped at Taste Nature, where we got some bulk sugar and refilled our laundry liquid. It was good to be able to reuse our perfectly container again, although it turned out to be very expensive ....eeek. Next time we may just have to switch to powder which comes in a cardboard box, although this usually leaves dusty residue all over the clothes, and since our machine only has cold water to run on, this probably does not help.

We visited New World in the city which has a great butchery counter. They were using paper for most items anyway which was good to see, so they didn't mind leaving out the little plastic sheet.

I (Ceire) have a confession, I went shopping for craft supplies and everything was in plastic but I bought it anyway. Naughty I know. I will add and extra day to the challenge....

Day 26

Well we have made it 1/4 of the way!

Thank goodness beer and wine comes in glass bottles!

Here are some pics of the coffee we are buying. (KA stands for Kick Ass!)

Day 20

Sneaky Samosas!

We went to a potLuck on the weekend and decided to grab something from the supermarket on the way to go with my freshly baked brownies. We decided on a box of samosas from the chilled section. All was fine until we got to the party and opened them to discover an evil (and unnecessary) plastic package inside! Dirty little samosas! So the lesson is WATCH OUT, plastic can be lurking where you least expect it....

Also we have been trying to think of a name for people (like ourselves) who don't use plastic, as we predict a revolution - but need a name, like Vegetarian, or Pescatarian or locavore..... All suggestions welcome.

We have switched to a paper-packaged brand of toilet paper, it is recycled and surprisingly softer than expected!

The Plastiki made it to Sydney check Plastiki on Inhabitat

Day 17

While cotton shopping bags are great for reducing your use of plastic, it takes the same amount of energy to make 183 plastic shopping bags as it does 1 cotton one!
So make sure you use yours at least 183 times (that's once a week for 3.5 years).