Plastic Free??

I’m a bit obsessed by plastic at the moment. After reading Plastic Free – How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can too by Beth Terry and Plastic – A Toxic Love Story by Susan Freinkel, plastic has moved back onto my radar.

As you can see here and here, we started removing plastic nearly 3 years ago after I read Chemical Free Kids & Slow Death by Rubber Duck. But after reading these two new books plus blogs like Mummy Footprint, I’m renewed in my horror at the pervasiveness of plastics in our bodies and our lives. I thought I was pretty up with plastics but have found that in some ways I am so not!! Then I saw this episode of Catalyst and was again inspired / had renewed energy to make further plastic free changes to our lifestyle.

This is a photo of my plastic waste for the last week (though it doesn’t include anything that could go into the recycle bin). Beth Terry really makes you think about what to do with this trash.

So what to do?? I really enjoyed Bec’s post today on A Less Complicated Life. How we do some things simply because they make life easier so that we can spend time on the things we want to do and think are important like gardening, bread making and the like and it made me think about the things I do (along with the trash) and about the things I could change…

:: I’d fallen into thinking our 1 tin of canned tuna per week was ok because a) Little B didn’t eat it (no BPA exposure for him) and b) because we bought Fish 4 Ever which is sustainably fished. After watching the Catalyst episode we no longer eat canned tuna.

:: I’ve also packed away our breadmaker into the shed. I make all our bread by hand (using a bulk River Cottage recipe) but if I ran out of time or we had a busy week, I would resort to making the dough in the breadmaker and shaping by hand and baking in our oven. After re-reading about Teflon and its effect on brains, this is a thing of the past. Now I buy bread by Phillipa’s as a last resort as it is made by hand.

:: Which leads to the unrecyclable plastics in my photo. Phillipa’s bread comes in a plastic bag :-( but I have discovered these great recycle bins by Red Project outside a local Coles where you can recycle plastic bags not accepted by your local council. Think bread bags, pasta bags, cereal bags, fresh produce bags, reusable green bags. These are then made into recycled outdoor furniture for schools. So I feel much more comfortable recycling my photographed plastic rubbish this way rather than sending it to landfill.

:: I’m also rethinking (yet again) what I purchase and aiming for products packaged in paper or glass. Plus we now keep all glass jars/ bottles that come into our house.

And oddly enough, I think this avoidance of plastic just encourages me to keep living the way we do – cooking from scratch, visiting local farmers markets, supporting local business, growing our own etc. Plus to be honest, why go to all the effort of growing my own organic vegies, if I’m poisoning my family in worse ways.

Do I think we need yet another thing to beat ourselves up about?? No - because as Bec covers beautifully, sometimes you just need to focus on the things you think are important. Little B has co-ordination disorder that was caused by a change to his neural pathways either in utero or early in life - knowing that these plastics can change brains, neural pathways and the like makes removing plastic something I feel is important. Did all those meals I reheated in plastic for lunches at work whilst pregnant make a difference? What about all the baby food I reheated in plastic because I was industrially making my own? I'll never know but I can make different informed choices now :-)

So for now, I’ve also decided to try one new thing a month from Beth Terry’s book. Her blog My Plastic-Free Life is also a great support. So for September, I’m decided to document all my plastic as a visual aid for me to know how much actually comes in the door and why I’ve made that choice.

I heart...

Another addition to the plastic free household. A few weeks back, I told Mr B that we should invent stainless steel icypole moulds as I think they would be so timely. Well a lovely family in Canada beat me too it, and they are currently available at AshnJuls. Pei-shan has put so much thought into importing quality plastic-free items for your kids and kitchen.


Hmmm I would love some of these for my birthday (hint, hint Mr B ;-)

I heart...

When I first started going plastic free, I searched high and low for stainless steel ice cube trays. And there where none to be found – zero, zip, nada…..but now you can get some here in Oz from AshnJuls. YAY :-)

Meet my new freezer bags

Being as anti-plastic as I am, one of my last frontiers has been the freezer. For the majority of items, I use Pyrex or stoneware containers to freeze meals or meat. Then I use greaseproof paper for things like home-made pizza bases. This left our bread, muffins and rolls.

So I bought some cotton tea towels, soaked them for 48 hours in salt to fix their colour and remove formaldehyde, washed them a number of times and sewed them together.

The only thing I'd change next time is to only use 1 tea towel per bag. I used 2 and they are huge LOL. I may even unpick this lot eventually and make that change. But I am happy with them as they are at the moment.

They work brilliantly as freezer bags and it has meant that I can get rid of yet more plastic from our lives. And that can only be a good thing :-)

Slow death by rubber duck

"A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushed down remorselessly all that stands in its path".

- Miss Marple

I'm currently reading "Slow death by rubber duck" and if "Chemical free Kids" hadnt put me on the path to making our house plastic-free then this has made me hit the ground running to ensure it occurs yesterday.

By Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie, this book is a must read. Each chapter deals with a different life experiment of another toxic nasty. Since I was already avoiding PVC, Triclosan, Teflon and BPA, the chapters I found most shocking were those on the levels of mercury we absorb (goodbye canned tuna) but also the insidiousness of BPA.

"Picture a drop of water, in which BPA is present in a concentration of one part per billion. Now tell me how many individual molecules of BPA would be in that water drop".

"A few hundred thousand?"

"Not even close. Try 132 billion. And each one of those molecules is able to turn cell receptors on and off just like hormones do"

- Slow Death by Rubber Duck (Smith & Lourie, 2009)

I knew the obvious things that some of these nasties were in but others surprised me (like my glasses lenses - vomit, vomit). Also the fact that people have known that these chemicals are toxic for 70 years in some cases, and that we have still gone ahead and produced things for both ourselves and our children is horrendous.

But it's not all doom and gloom. They have a great chapter with a roadmap on how to detox yourself, your house and your lifestyle, which I think is both very upbeat and helpful.

I believe this toxic pollution of our bodies, our health, our home environment and our children is as important as climate change. We are poisoning ourselves, the ones we love and our planet, so if you agree about even one of those areas, then you must read this book.

PVC Free Gumboots

FYI you can currently buy PVC free gumboots at Target and Cotton On Kids. They are made from 100% rubber (other than the synthetic lining).

All the gumboots in Cotton On Kids are rubber and about 50% in Target. So look carefully.

The only difference with rubber gumboots is they need more aftercare. You should dry them off and out when finished for the day. Otherwise they perish much quicker than PVC gumboots. (Mind you that's not a problem here as Little B outgrows his gumboots year to year - 2 sizes bigger this year!!).

Nothing like a good mud pie :-)

Latest addition to the toybox

After some successful ebay sales of a few of Little B's old plastic toys, we have a new addition to Little B's toybox.

It's a recycling truck from Green Toys. It's made from recycled milk jugs and is BPA and pthalate free. It also came in a recycled cardboard box (no plastic ties) and has cute little cut out recycling things (like newspaper, cans).

It's been a HUGE hit and Little B cant stop playing with it :-)

Cast Iron Frypan

I’ve fallen in love with my cast iron fry pan and cast iron wok. This is meaningful because I used to be a card carrying member of the anti-fat brigade ;-) Mainly because I had so many health issues that I attributed them (wrongly I might add) to fat and meat. Since finding out about my food allergies when Little B was diagnosed, I can now make our food choices based on the best things for us physically, ethically and sustainably.

But back to the cast iron frypan. This works so much better than my non-stick frypan that I don’t know why I didn’t change over years ago. Things cook evenly and quickly and its become virtually non-stick anyway with constant use (also the wok makes our stir fries taste so much better). I’m also comfortable now with seasoning them and cleaning / caring for them properly.

In hindsight, my conversion is hilarious. Mr B used to swear by cast iron cookware and I used to look at him like he had two heads. Now he looks at me like I have two heads as he cant believe after 8 years that I’ve so completely come around to his way of thinking ☺

PS If anyone is investigating seasoning cast iron cookware, I can heartily recommend the salt method. I’ve done it both ways and this is sooo much better!!

Plastic-free Toys

You’ll have gathered from my previous posts that I am on an anti-plastic crusade at the House of B. After attacking the kitchen, I’m now ransacking Little B’s bedroom and toy box. I’ve thrown out all the extraneous plastic rubbish he plays with and have now ear marked the things I need to replace. All of it will go onto op-shops or I will sell via ebay to fund the new purchases we need to make.

What has been pleasantly surprising is how many plastic free environmentally friendly toys and toy companies there are out there.

I love Plan Toys and also Haba Toys.

We’ve also been inspired to replace all of Little B’s plastic play food with knitted play food. This way we can actively control what goes into them. Lots of family members have come on board to help us in this respect and Little B is now the proud owner of a knitted banana, pear, strawberries, donuts and cupcakes ☺



Clearing out his toy box also made me realise how much Little B prefers imagination to things. He spends ages playing with toilet roll people (even though he has toy ones) and play dough creations. The branded toys rarely get a look in.

Toxic Plastic

We are well into ridding our kitchen from plastic. The more I read about plastic the more horrified I get. I could kick myself continually for all the early plastic stuff that Little B has been exposed too. I have also been surprised by how much food comes in plastic containers that are considered bad – why put sugar in #3 plastic?? Really why??.

I’m lucky Mr B is a coffee addict and I have a HUGE stash of ex-coffee jars to store my baking stuff in. I’ve also become more creative with stuff I currently have. An old round salad bowl has become my mixing bowl for cooking (till we can find what we want at the op shop). My salad bowls etc have become super handy right about now. So have all my old canisters that were for tea or empty.

I’ve repurposed most of my kitchen plastic to Mr B’s garage. There he is storing his screws, nails etc in funky new containers.

Also Little B starts kindy in a few weeks and must have a lunchbox he can open. We’ve invested in a stainless steel lunchbox (Lunchbot Duo) and he already has a stainless steel water bottle.

Next on my chuck out list (as $$ permit) are any of our saucepans with non stick coatings (we currently have half stainless steel, half non-stick), all plastic utensils (most have gone but the rest need replacing) and working on the last big stuff in our pantry like bread flour still in plastic. I’m on the look out for an old fashioned ceramic bread flour container.

I threw out all of our microwave plastic yesterday after learning even #5’s will leach into food when heated. I’m lucky I grew up in a household that used glass, ceramic and stainless steel mostly but I shudder for Little B. Hopefully its early enough to stop the damage we have been doing to his health (and our health for that matter).

Today I managed to pick up some gorgeous Japanese stoneware bowls and pots from the op shop that can be used to store and reheat food. I’ve decided to check in once a week with a couple of op shops that have great kitchen ware sections and hope to keep picking up what I need.