Toxin-Free Life Series : Part 5: Banishing plastics from home

Can you imagine living without plastic?  Rajee is on a crusade to get rid of all toxins from her home.  In her Toxin Free Life Series, Rajee shares her step by step elimination of chemicals and toxins from her home.  #ecotuesday

My First step to banishing plastic from home was throwing away plastic liners from my Trash cans. This I wanted to do for a very long time anyway. I read this very useful article that talked about how we can handle household trash without plastic bags.

So I started to compost my veggies/Fruits in a separate basket. Glass/Wrappers/Plastic go to recycle. With this, I find that there is very little trash at home. I am having to empty the trash can only once in a month and because it is dry I don’t need plastic liners. What a great way to eliminate the need for the big/ fragrant plastic liners. Also It’s probably just me but I have always found the fresh artificial scent from the liners suffocating. So I have found great relief!

I remember a long time ago, I used to feel reluctant to occasionally walk carrying my small garbage can to empty it. But now I take a little walk and carry this big 11 gallon trash can to the community trash. I now don’t feel any embarrassment in walking with a trash can, but instead I find myself secretly happy that I am doing something different with a purpose and I don’t really care what others would think of me.

I currently keep meat/dairy/cooked rice in a small recycled plastic bag that we get from the store and dispose it to the community trash as soon as I can. This is something to get rid of eventually as I move toward a plastic free home. Even if you use plastic liners I will have to buy one without fragrance. Any Industrial product with fragrance has synthetic toxic chemicals on it. This includes our perfumes and deodorants.

The plastic bags we get from store are recycled bags and they carry less plastic than the common plastic bags sold in the store for some specific purpose. So if you need to use plastic bag and cannot avoid it, you can use these ones in place of the ones sold in the store.

Image Source: //www.quintamazatlan.com

I have to talk about my compost too. It was a nice idea and I liked the fact that I could use it as natural fertilizer for my plants in my organic garden.

I tried composting only once and buried the compost in my garden bed. Because the compost was half done, it would take some time to break down by bacteria and to release the nutrients to the soil. If you have a really good garden space, you can directly dump your veggies waste in your designated spot, so that you don’t have to do the compost inside your home.

Anyway I stopped doing it after that onetime, as I did mess something up with the procedure and so the compost started to smell. So I am putting this composting task aside just for now and I want to revisit it later.

I shall write more as I go.