A life without plastics?

[n2doc]

A writer tries not using or buying plastic for a week. It's not easy. Diapers are involved.

By Trine Tsouderos | Tribune reporter
December 27, 2008

Amid a recent flurry of worrisome reports about plastic, a simple question came up: Could we live without it?

Could my typical family—a mom, a dad, a 3-year-old girl and a 7-month-old boy—put aside the very material of American lives, the products that greet us after birth in the diapers we wear and ushers us out at death in the body bags we are zipped into?

Could we break this addiction?

I decided to try. For one week, I pledged to buy no new plastic and to keep the kids away from it as much as possible.

It meant putting away the plastic kids' utensils and plates and princess sippy cups and pacifiers. It meant bringing our own bags to stores and forgoing Dunkin' Donuts coffee and fun-size candies. It meant cooking more and relying less on food that comes frozen in plastic bags.

So daunting did it seem that on the day before I started, I binged like a dieter snarfing cookies. Two Target bags to pick up dog poop. Fruit snacks out of plastic bags. Gatorade and Vitaminwater from plastic bottles. The clothes at Macy's came on plastic hangers, and when the clerk offered a plastic bag to take them away, I said, "Yes!"

more:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-plastic-free-satdec27,0,5147886.story