A plastic orgy?

As of Sunday, the three months is up! I'd been wondering how to celebrate - perhaps by buying as much plastic as humanly possible and wrapping myself up in it - but in fact, I've yet to get ANY new plastic. I feel I MAY NEVER GO BACK.

I shall certainly buy:
bike lights
Marmite
a new library card & driving license
Gran Marnier

and probably some other bits and bobs. But I can't imagine new plastic bags or packaged sandwiches or salads... and I REALLY want a cucumber, but it just seems ridiculous that they're all individually wrapped.

I'll soon post some FAQs relating to giving up plastic, so if you've any suggestions, let me know!

Camp

None of this plastic-free party preparation outlined below is anywhere NEAR as hardcore as Rose's wonderful success in providing plastic-free catering for the weekend away on which we took the Lancaster Woodcraft Folk. I couldn't really be bothered doing it for groups due to the apparent cost and effort. BUT getting fruit and veg from the greengrocers is probably cheaper than getting it from a supermarket anyway. And the cooking ought to have been fairly cheap as it didn't involve meat. And it always takes a few hours to do group shopping anyway. Before, I'd been going to Aldi, Asda, Lidl, etc., in Morecambe, which takes quite a while because of traffic. This time we did most of the shopping between 4pm and 6.30pm in Lancaster. Plus Rose did a trip to Preston to get things like loose pasta... So yes, it took a bit longer, but it was definitely less hassle than I'd have thought and I intend to always try to make the most ethical choices possible when shopping for big groups in the future!

Two things we couldn't get around were soya milk (veganism seems to have many other ethical benefits, though) and marshmallows (even the veggies might have mutinied if we didn't have these, though I'm sure you can get vegetarian ones somewhere). Any suggestions?

Party

We're hosting on Saturday. Being in an authoritarian mood I informed my housemate I couldn't countenance plastic in the shopping. I have therefore volunteered to make pizzas, dips, cakes and sweets myself rather than buying them. This is pleasing to me as I violently dislike those horrible plasticky sets of four dips people buy. EVERY ONE of those dips tastes like a different variation of rubber. I will also get lots of orange juice from the milkman and try to make some non-alcoholic and alcoholic punches.

They are providing paper plates and cups. I dislike the waste of using these ever so we're just using up the ones they already have and after that I've promised to do all the washing up of the crockery (However I have a sneaking suspicion my housemate will buy more paper cups, take off the plastic, and claim they were just lying around the house somewhere).

We will buy beer in bottles or cans in cardboard boxes (I'm being lenient about the cans, as cans almost certainly have plastic in them), and wine with proper corks and foil on them (difficult to work this out before opening).

I will try to make breadsticks. This seems a bit tedious but they're a dreadful waste of money and packaging and my housemate seems to want them.

BUT what about mixers? Coke, lemonade, tonic water. It seems quite rude not to provide anything to mix your drinks with. Is there a way of making water carbonated without a soda streamer? I could certainly do with a G&T...

Letters, bills, junk, birthday cards

For plastic windows in envelopes, and magazines in plastic:

I've finally given in and signed up for paper-free billing on telephone, gas, electricity and internet. I don't really like doing this as I think I'll forget to check them but I'm paying them all by direct debit so I suppose it doesn't matter too much.

In the process of switching to internet banking and online billing - coping with some paranoia about fraud, which is terribly backward of me.

I also took the advice posted in Andrew's earlier comment on this blog: returning incorrectly addressed mail to the sender, opting out of unaddressed mail with Royal Mail, and signing up to the Mail Preference Service to stop getting unsolicited (junk) mail. This doesn't stop you getting things like your local papers or election information from the council or political parties, etc, so we will still probably receive some plastic in the post, but some is better than lots!

On a related note, I've started making cards for birthdays and other occasions a lot more than I was. You can still get postcards and some cards that don't come in plastic, but a home made card's much better! The card industry is SUCH a rip-off!