Kristi Ward - A Day Without Plastic? (Emma Sec. 303)

Upon reading that we were supposed to attempt a day without using any plastics, I immediately knew it would be extremely challenging, if not impossible. The minute I stepped out of bed, I came in contact with some unavoidable plastics; some of which I had never even realized are plastic. Just within the first five minutes of being awake, I had to turn off my cell phone alarm (which is made of plastic), flip the light switch in my room (also plastic), use the bathroom (toilet seat is made of plastic), and the list just goes on from here. Since I obviously quickly failed the "day without plastics" challenge, I decided I would try to fully complete a single daily task without using any form of plastics.

I challenged myself to make myself lunch without coming into contact with plastics. As I thought about what I should make, many of my choices were eliminated since they were packaged in some sort of plastic or required a plastic object to open. After I ruled out bread, lunch meat, everything in my freezer, yogurt, and canned goods (since my can opener has a plastic handle), I decided to make shells and cheese which was sitting in my cabinet in a cardboard box (finally, a food that had nothing to do with plastic)!

The first step was to boil the water. Since all of my measuring devices are made of plastic, I just filled my stainless steel pot with water until it seemed like enough to cook the pasta. I was very grateful that my stove has metal knobs to turn on the burners, otherwise I probably would have had to go lunchless. With the pot full of water heating on the stove, I had to find the single wooden spoon in my apartment so I could actually stir the noodles. Once the water boiled, I opened the box, poured the pasta into the water, and went to set the stove timer for 12 minutes...until I realized that the buttons were made of plastic. After a moment of brainstorming, I concluded that I would just have to estimate the cooking time, since my cell phone and the microwave timer also contain plastic.

When I thought it had been about 12 minutes, I removed the pot from the burner and had to come up with a way to strain the noodles (since my strainer is made of plastic). I ended up just using my wooden spoon to block the pasta from escaping as I poured the water out --this actually was quite difficult and I ended up with a good 1/4 of my pasta in the sink. Once I had gotten out as much water as I could, it was time to add the cheese sauce.

The cheese sauce came prepackaged in a thick aluminum-like pouch. Since it didn't contain plastic, I thought it worked out perfectly that I could just rip it open and add the cheese to the noodles. The package turned out to be extremely difficult to rip, and I couldn't use scissors like I normally would because their handles are plastic. After about 3 minutes of using the "teeth method", the package finally opened. I poured the cheese on the noodles and stirred it with my wooden spoon, which was actually kind of gross because some of the cheese found its way into the deep grains of the wood and remained there.

Finally, I took out a glass bowl and metal fork and scooped some of the pasta into my bowl using the wooden spoon. Although I successfully cooked my meal without using plastics, clean up was a different story. I couldn't really do anything besides soak the dishes in water, since all of my dish soap was contained in plastic bottles. It's actually pretty sad that plastics have invaded our lives to a point where even completing a simple task (such as making lunch) without using plastics is challenging. This experience really opened my eyes and motivated me to lead a more plastic-independent lifestyle.