Presents and hospitality

What does one do about these? Turning down a present because it's got plastic in it seems ridiculously stuffy, but then again what's the point of giving up plastic if you don't tell people that you're doing it and explain why?

And what about eating round a friend's house? Rose (who's doing this too; see her much more informative blog at http://plasticandphysics.blogspot.com/) and I agreed that if you're having a hot drink somewhere you go regularly, like your office (I work in two different places) or a good friend's, you ought to provide your own non-plastic-derived tea (there are a limited amount of brands which provide tea-bags in cardboard boxes with no plastic wrapping). If you're going somewhere else, it's ok to accept tea, but not really to accept biscuits that come out of a plastic box as that seems more wasteful.

But this is a very murky area. I went to a party for my grandfather's eighty-eighth birthday round my great aunt's house, and there was a delicious cold buffet almost all of which came from plastic packaging. Seeing as I couldn't refuse to eat, I ended up eating everything (it seems greed is an obstacle to a plastic-free existence), including individually wrapped cheeses.

So where can you draw the line? Should you perhaps phone ahead to inform people that you won't eat any plastic-wrapped food? This seems immensely inconvenient and ungrateful, especially to relatives who are merely, out of the kindness of their hearts, fulfilling familial duties.

Unsolicited letters with plastic windows are also leaving me stumped.

My great aunt also tried to give me a tube of toothpaste as I was staying the night. When I refused because it had a plastic lid, she exclaimed, 'You'll be the death of me with your plastic!' Instead of beating me round the head with it, as I thought she looked likely to do, she gave me two interesting tips for toothpaste and two for glue, which I shall post this weekend (it's about time I wrote something that was actually useful on here).