Most of the juice I buy these days comes in tetra paks. My husband needs thicker liquids, so mango, pear, passion fruit nectar go in my grocery cart. I still buy prune nectar in plastic, something he insists on for breakfast. For a while I was buying a vegetable cocktail that also came in plastic. We’d try different ones, all tomato based but with different combinations of vegetables. Some were not quite thick enough.

Finally, after months of putting two litre plastic containers in the recycling, I remembered that tomato juice comes in cans. I had to look a little farther along the juice aisle and down on the bottom shelf, but I found it. And tomato juice in a can is consistently thick. A plastic item removed.

Getting rid of all the plastic I am able to has been a goal for this year. I even let myself be influenced by internet and television advertising. You know those kids playing with fire and advertising laundry sheets. I ordered some. They work. No more laundry detergent jugs.  

When I lamented the shift from powdered laundry detergent—when and why did that happen—and complained a little about dishwasher pods, someone pointed out that powdered dishwasher detergent was available. I opened my eyes in the grocery aisle, and low and behold, there it was right beside what I had been buying for the last three years.

For some time, I used the refillery in Owen Sound for dish soap. That refillery closed, and unless I have a reason to drive to Meaford, Southampton or Flesherton, it feels like the gas use doesn’t fit. I sought other options. One is a large cardboard container. It does have a plastic bag inside, but it is a lot less plastic. The other option I found online is a concentrate in a compostable package. Both work very well.

I had been getting hand soap from the refillery as well, but that substitution was easy. I had always gotten bars of soap for the shower. I bought new soap dishes to hold the bars in the bathroom and kitchen. Again, I wonder when liquid soap became the thing for washing our hands.

What to do about shampoo? I would often just buy whatever was on sale but they all came in plastic containers. I found shampoo bars online. Then, I was told I could get them at the Artists Co-op in Owen Sound. And I found a couple of artisans selling hand made shampoo bars at the market. The ones I’ve tried are great.

More recently, I have heard a major company advertising shampoo bars. I will have to look more closely in that aisle to make sure the stores I shop in are carrying the bars. I think I will support the artisans for now, but I do appreciate when eco-friendly products become part of the main stream.

A month ago, I had to buy plastic bags for picking up dog poop. Until then, I was using grocery bags. I had a lot of them. Although I had shifted to cloth grocery bags and produce bags for shopping years ago, during the first eighteen months of the pandemic, I did not go into a grocery store. I used delivery and pick up services. Those packed the groceries in plastic bags (although just before I started shopping in person again one chain switched to reusable and paper bags.)

The collection of grocery bags lasted a year plus. When I went to the pet store to pick up what other people use, I was overwhelmed by the variety of colours available and unsure of the point of the patterns. I just grabbed the nearest, to be told later that the ones down lower, the green ones, are compostable. Next time, I will have to slow down and read the packaging to figure out what they mean by compostable.

Avoiding plastic spoons and forks is not that hard. I can carry my own cutlery when I know I’m grabbing fast food. I have some made of bamboo and found some made of birch just last week. But there is still a ridiculous amount of plastic in my recycling every week. Cutting it out is an amazingly difficult task.

Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway nation