All of the plastic I used trying to do Plastic Free July 2026

Is it possible to go fully plastic free for an entire month? Well, I'm about to try it out for Plastic Free July. If you want to hear my full thoughts before going into this challenge, check out this video that I put out in July. But for now, let's get into the recap, the vlog of how this challenge went, day by day, my struggles, did I predict my struggles correctly? Did I run into new struggles that I didn't know existed? And with no spoilers, was I able to go 31 days without using a single piece of plastic? Let's find out. Good morning, everyone. Happy July 1st. It is the first day of Plastic Free July. It's going to be hard to vlog for 31 days straight, I think, but today we're already facing a challenge. I have to go get some food for game night and a cookout because it's 4th of July weekend. So let's go first take inventory of what I already have in the kitchen and then we'll head to the store. Okay, first, all the plastic that I already have in here doesn't count because I purchased it in June. We are only going to be focusing on the plastic that I purchased from here on out. So thankfully, yeah, I do. This was not on purpose. Okay. I still have one tofu left and one hummus left and some butter. I promise. I meant to use it up before. It's not intentional, but moving forward, I will have to figure out a way to have breakfast plastic free and somebody did on my like, here's my Plastic Free July plan video. Somebody suggested the British beans on toast and I said, wait, and I think I could get behind that for a few weeks for breakfast. I think I'll be able to find everything plastic free except for vegan meat because we're going to a cookout for 4th of July. We want to bring some vegan sausages. I don't think I can find that plastic free. Now what I can do is find it with the least amount of plastic. Yeah, that's just what I'm going to do. And then I'm making a pasta salad, which is mostly vegetables, which I can find plastic free. But of course, some of it's going to have rubber bands. Some of it's going to have stickers. So as I mentioned in like the, my plan for the month video, I know I'm not gonna be perfect. My goal is to just be as close to perfect as possible, even if it's going to be hard and it's going to be hard. So I'm going to go volunteer real quick and then I will go to the store. Ideally, I wanted to get cherry tomatoes, but alas, those came in plastic. So I went with package free tomatoes, still came with stickers, but I think that was the only produce I got with stickers. So that's good. And then of course, like the lid of the rice vinegar, red wine vinegar bottle, and then the little windows on the pasta boxes. Ordinarily, I would have tried to go get pasta from the bulk store and gotten it totally package free, but it is for a friend with a gluten intolerance and I don't want to poison my friends. So we went with safety today and that's like the importance of food packaging. So you know, if you can't shop at the refill store because of allergies, don't sweat it. Just do your best. It was still, you know, 99% plastic free. And then the receipt too, the receipt printed without me saying yes or no. So a lot of unavoidable plastic in the grocery store, as I'm sure we all know. Um, it is July 2nd. Did I put it in here? I started a trash jar. I picked a really big one. Um, we went to a baseball game and they were giving out free ice cream. Couldn't say no to free ice cream. The overall little container was cardboard, paperboard, and then there was a little plastic spoon inside. So I kept the plastic spoon to put in my jar. I don't know. It feels kind of weird too because like throughout the rest of the year, I wouldn't say no to that. Um, because I've gotten in kind of this eco groove where like, it's a hard line, right? Like it depends on you and, and your life and where you live and your habits and whatever. But like, if I want ice cream, I don't want to deny myself ice cream, you know, going to a local ice cream shop where you can just get a waffle cone with a, with a paper napkin. That's plastic free. So like there are options to get ice cream plastic free, but like in that situation, yeah. So perhaps this challenge will open your eyes to the fact that maybe I'm more wasteful than you thought. Because like I do wasteful things like that pretty regularly. But then there are other aspects of my life where I reduce so much more waste. I'm the least reliant on my car that I've ever been. We do majority of our cooking from scratch. We like rarely get takeout. We shop at the refill store. We shop at the farmer's market. Like I do so many more eco things that I think getting one little ice cream every now and then that has a little bit of plastic is not that bad. Um, sous vide. For now it's breakfast, which isn't going to be anything special because I'm still working through the stuff that I bought in June. So I'm not going to show you anything until that stuff runs out. I'll see you later today if I consume some plastic. Happy day three of Plastic Free July. Yesterday, no plastic. Excellent news. Um, because today I'm using a lot. I already opened a new tub of butter, which had a plastic lid on top. I made pasta salad, which I bought the ingredients for the other day. And so I took the plastic lining off of the box. I'm getting a tattoo today. It's going to go right here. A little fern. And then I'm getting a paw print for Donahi on this arm. That'll be a lot of single use materials, which is fine because I want to be safe and sanitary. And you can learn more about my thoughts on getting tattoos as an environmentalist in this video. This is probably going to be one of the more wasteful days of the month. Hopefully. Hopefully no more wasteful ones. We'll find out. Good morning, folks. Here's the new ink. Currently has second skin on there. Plastic. There's one. Here's the other. Um, so that's some plastic. Of course, all the plastic of being at the shop. This shop is relatively eco-friendly. Like, they did a lot of paper where they could have done plastic. Stick and poke requires no batteries or electricity. It's all human powered. Other plastic I consumed yesterday. We play this game with some friends once or twice a month, and we were... This is upcycled. I got this in the mail. And we reused this to store, like, the little chips in, but it broke, so that's going in the trash jar. I started a new tub of butter and finished this tub of butter. I'm not keeping the whole tub. I'm just keeping this for evidence. Um, both of those, which I purchased in June, but still plastic I used. A marketing email for earrings for this business that I really, really love. And they're on sale for 4th of July, and I was about to buy some, but they're made out of plastic. So I talked myself out of it. I'll think about those earrings more before I decide to purchase them in August, if I even want to. But by then, I probably won't even care about them anymore. So good use of using plastic for July to talk myself out of an impulse. Um, today we are going to the farmer's market, which there will be some plastic there, but a lot of it is reusable. Like if we get strawberries, for example, um, we can take the basket back next week. So that sort of plastic, I'm not going to stress as much. Like if I want a juice, I'm going to get a juice. They're going to reuse the plastic. It'll be okay. Otherwise, everything at the farmer's market is package-free or in paper, so that's pretty cool. Oh wait, I did use one more piece of plastic that I didn't keep yesterday because it was dirty. We got french fries while I was at my tattoos because I was hungry, and I had one packet of ketchup. And then here's some more plastic for today. It's 4th of July, repping my reworked by Sav. This is truly the only way that you can find, quite frankly, anything that you put on the grill, but especially vegan stuff. So a little compromise there. Um, it's really hard to do potlucks and parties plastic-free. That is, that is the update. Okay, so as I said, I'm not sacrificing my health. I've been dealing with plantar fasciitis since February since I broke my ankle, so I'm getting these. But hey, cardboard packaging! Alright, good morning. It should be July 6th, I believe. So we did have success in the bulk store. We got a Durble bag full of gummies. We've got a Stasher bag full of sesame snacks. And that was it. Oh, I also did get discount bananas. These were like 70 cents a pound, and I'm gonna make banana muffins with them for the road trip. So we did have some success there. I have been dealing with an injury for four months now. Three months? Whatever. I did get a brace for my ankle secondhand from a friend, unused, she just had an extra one in packaging. So that was pretty eco, but that wasn't helping the full problem. I also have developed plantar fasciitis because of the rolled ankle and because of compensating. I did need to get some plantar fasciitis inserts yesterday. And then because we're going out of town for dancing, it was truly impossible to find electrolytes sustainable. I don't know, at least it's in cardboard. It was a lot of plastic yesterday, all of it for health reasons. We did buy pasta at the bulk store yesterday, which is cool, we've never done that before. And then this was like half of a bag of extra. So this was also just part of the food waste that needed to be thrown into this meal. Despite that, I'm still putting it in the plastic jar. We got a receipt from CVS. Oh, this was part of Dan's brace, Dan also got a brace. Here's the leftovers of my insoles that I cut. You know, sometimes you have to make an unsustainable purchase in order to fulfill something more sustainable like repairing. Like I would rather buy this teeny tiny tube glue than throw away an entire table and chairs, buy a new one brand new. Like that's so much more sustainable to buy something small that's unsustainable. Anyway, here's the trash jar update on day six. We are not doing well, folks. I do need to put it into perspective. We have gotten a lot in the bulk store already. We have already kind of solidified our eco life up until now. We could be using in a ton more plastic, we could be buying plastic water bottles every day and plastic juice and plastic sodas, we could be getting takeout three meals a day every day. On the spectrum of eco waste, we're obviously not perfect, but we're definitely on this side as opposed to like the hyper wasteful side. It is next day. Two fruit stickers from an apple and a tomato and then, oh, I didn't put them in here yet. One of our dancing traditions is, here they are, I think, is to once a month, yeah, go to a diner after dance and I thought it was just going to be receipts. My fries came with a little plastic cup that I didn't want. So that sucks. And then Dan ordered a milkshake. Dan's not going as hard as I'm personally going and that's okay. And then this morning I finished this milk with an obviously plastic cup, but also this carton board is lined with plastic. Not a great one and this is not recyclable in my area. Some areas you can recycle this, but not here. So make sure you check your local rules. That's the update of the day. Good morning. It is July 8th, I think. I don't have my watch on because I went and got my nails done yesterday. Not terribly eco, but I do believe the process was, was plastic free. Did I consume other plastic yesterday? I don't think so. No. A plastic free day, I believe. I didn't do a lot of driving. I had to drive to an appointment and then I had to drive to the nails and then I had to drive to a friend's house. I just watched Heated Rivalry. And then today I am, ignore emoji, I'm kind of prepping the house for us to leave. I'm going to freeze a couple brown bananas because we're not going to eat them before we leave out of town. The other brown bananas, I'm making banana muffins for the car to have more plastic free snacks in the car. And then I do need to get a couple more car essentials. I get horribly car sick in my adult age, so I need to go get some more gemamine. Gingers, ginger chews really help me in the car. There's only 14 in here. I think I might go get one more small batch of those. So those will come in plastic, but their health needs. Other stuff for the car, we'll probably go get coffee in the morning and reusable cups. And then we'll probably get like a kombucha in glass for the car. Oh yeah, I got stuff for tonight for D&D. The cheese was plastic. Can't help that. Even dairy cheese comes in plastic. I'm sorry, I'm not having cheeseless pizza in the month of July. If that makes me a bad zero waster, oh well. What's up folks? Don't mind me. Trying to make sure my friends don't see me vlogging. I hate vlogging in front of people. Okay, it is July 11th. July 9th, we drove from our town to Oakland. We danced there. We stayed the night there. Yesterday, we drove from Oakland to Irvine. So that was the adventure. Today we've been dancing all day. Tomorrow we're dancing all day, whatever, whatever. We have done relatively well being plastic free, namely me. No offense, but I gotta throw Dan under the bus. He's been getting a little bit more frivolous plastic than I have. We've been stopping at sandwich shops, which is all paper. We went to Coco's Curry last night, which they gave us paper for takeout except for the bag. And then this morning, today's been pretty bad. We went to a sit-down cafe and they served us our beverages, our water, and our coffee in plastic. I'm like, this is why we dined in, so that I could avoid takeout. But I have been doing my darndest to not only myself be plastic free, but now I'm encouraging my entire group to be plastic free. For example, we wanted Thai food tonight and a lot of the closer Thai places had stuff in plastic. It was takeout only. So I got something, I found a restaurant that was like a little bit farther away. Not too much. Oh, and then here's my bracelet to get into the dance events, which is plastic. I like to keep my dance bracelets though and put them in my junk journal. Yikes, traveling is extremely difficult to do plastic free. I already knew that, but now that I'm really being conscious of it this month, it's becoming even harder. And Dan got a lot of packages. All of this is secondhand clothing, but a lot of it did come in plastic. And then this is some photos he's entering in the county fair, also in plastic. So let's see if we can fit it all in the jar. Here's a little recap from the weekend. We got back yesterday. Let's see. It was Sunday night. It was at the very end of this dance conference. Did I want to get food really quickly and go to the beach and hang out with my friends and watch the dancing? Yes. But did I eat inside of that restaurant to avoid the takeout? Also yes. So that was cool. Then there were a few times where I did have to have a moral dilemma of, I can't finish this food. I offered it to everybody at the table, and everybody said, no, I don't want any. I'm also full. So then it was like, okay, do I throw this food away, which is not good for the planet? Or do I get a takeout container, which is most likely plastic, for the sake of not throwing this food away? And that was what I chose every time. Most of the time though, we did get paper containers, paper slash cardboard, for the takeout, which is great. Only a couple times did we get plastic. Let's see. The other stuff in the gas station, I was constantly tempted by the gummies and the sweets. I love getting a little snack on a road trip. Every time I went into a gas station, I never got anything edible because it was pretty much always in plastic. And when I did get drinks, I would opt for cans and glass bottles. But even when you get a glass bottle, like a glass bottle of kombucha, it's got a plastic lid. It's just so hard to avoid plastic, no matter how hard you're trying. And that's ultimately why I'm doing this challenge. I consider myself a pretty advanced zero waster, and even I cannot live zero waste perfectly. Even I can't live plastic free perfectly. I think the biggest challenge was we went to this breakfast restaurant twice. Somebody in our group who is a stronger vegan than I, me and Dan who are vegan-ish, and then two friends who are allergic to dairy and nuts. One friend allergic to nuts. Anyway, so it's really difficult for us to find a place where we can all eat where nobody dies. And we found this breakfast place that had a plethora of vegan options. It was really quick. It was really close to the venue. It was really good food. It was really great service. So we went back there, even though on day one, we dined in. This table over here had glass cups. So I thought, I don't need to run to the car to go get my reusable cup because I'm dining in and everybody else has glass. And then they bring our cups to us in plastic. I was so mad. I'm like, I'm dining in. And so the next day, should I have brought my reusable cup? Probably. But I said, once again, we're dining in. I think that was just a fluke. Maybe the waitress put it in as a to-go order or something. Whatever. I thought it was a fluke. No. Day two, even more tables are full because it's now Sunday at brunch. Even more glass cups that I see at every single table. And once again, we get plastic cups at our table. And once again, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. I'm like, maybe they just put it in as a to-go order. But then I'm looking at my cup and I'm looking at everybody's cups and I'm just like, what does DI stand for on all of our cups? Dine-in. It stands for dine-in. So it was registered as a dine-in order. So that was my biggest gripe of the entire trip. Otherwise, managed to be really quite plastic free. And we are now almost two-thirds of the way through the challenge. I really, I don't know what other hiccups I may face. Potentially the last half week of July, my mom's coming to town and we are going to be doing some driving around, some hiking, some sightseeing. So in that case, we might be running to the store real quick to get a wrap or a sandwich to go. And again, in which case I will just look for something wrapped in paper or cardboard and just be plastic free. But I could see maybe having to get some plastic in those situations. For now, that's the update. I'm happy to be home and happy to have more control over the plastic or no plastic in my life. We are going to a birthday party tomorrow and we were asked to bring food from a potluck. We're kind of supposed to make it on theme, but I'm not going to. We did have two brown bananas left over that we literally trucked from LA back up here. So that I could make banana bread. So I'm going to make banana muffins, food waste for the party, and then it's still plastic free so I don't have to buy anything in plastic for the party either. Dinner tonight is a bit of a challenge because we have very little left in the house. What I do have is two cans of fire roasted tomatoes and some pasta, which does have a plastic window. And then these beans that I have soaking that I got from a friend. She used half the bag, which was plastic. But I'm preventing food waste by using all this stuff that I already had. I did buy a few things to supplement. Baby broccoli, which I've never gotten before, but it was, it was plastic free, except for this little label. But the carrots that I actually wanted came in plastic. So I avoided the plastic there. I got bananas, which have this little plastic thing on it. Like avoiding the produce bags, avoiding the produce that comes packaged in plastic. You still can't be perfect. Onion, plastic sticker, pepper, no plastic sticker actually. Oh rats, I meant to get a tomato for breakfast. Two apples, but only one of them has a plastic sticker. I was going to get some chocolate on clearance because it was on clearance, but it came packaged in plastic. So I got some, some chocolate wrapped in paper instead and cost more money, which not everybody can do. And then we just ran out of trash bags for our little trash cans. So I did get compostable bioplastic because unfortunately you can't get trash bags plastic free. And I don't know if, I mean, I'm not being that strict for this challenge. I don't think bioplastics counts for plastic free July. Let me know your thoughts down below. Anything else? Oh, and then the last thing was one more little treat, a little Olipop, my favorite plastic free drink. Anyway, even trying to be absolutely perfect about being plastic free, you can't avoid it in most supermarkets. You know, my farmer's market only operates once a week and I don't have any food in my house today. Um, and this is just the reality of living in a plastic obsessed world. Good morning. It is July 17th. I went to the store because as I said yesterday, I forgot a tomato. I got a tomato, no sticker. I didn't mean to do that. I did treat myself to a mango with the sticker. Another Olipop. Sue me, it's plastic free. I just love a little treat in the afternoon, a little pick me up. It's got prebiotics and fiber and they're so good. And then this is a really fun addition to being plastic free. I need to start eating these. I foraged blackberries. I didn't mean to do this for plastic free July. I did this because invasive blackberries, invasive Himalayan blackberries. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, definitely learn about this and eat them all because the more that we eat, the less that they can spread and take over our native blackberries. Of course, enjoy and eat the native blackberries too. I think they taste relatively similar. These are invasive. And the more we eat, the less that they spread. The more that we let the native blackberries go to seed and go to fruit and let the animals eat them and poop them out, the more that those will spread. And anyway, so that's why I did that. And then this morning, I went to go take these out to eat for breakfast. And I'm like, wait, that's a free July hack. Forage your own berries. There's no plastic. Because berries, I think is one of the hardest things to get plastic free. You can't even get them package free, really. Here are all of the banana muffins I made for the party. Plastic. My jar is getting kind of full. I did use some plastic yesterday. I opened a hummus, which had a lid on it, but I did buy this in June. And then, oh, also a cheese. I don't know where the top of it went. I only saved the top because the bottom part is so dirty. A cheese that we bought in June. We froze it before we went out of town so it wouldn't go bad. And then I put it in our pasta that I made last night, which was almost entirely food waste. Oh yeah, I have three slices of tofu left, which will last me through the 20th. So I'll have to do 11 days, no tofu this month. I need to feed my sourdough starter. So I think I'm just going to do sourdough and baked beans. I'm going to do beans. I'm going to do beans on toast, like I live in London or something. Sorry to all of Great Britain. I'm seeking advice, because I do want to move away from this moving forward. Seaweed snacks. I just made rice because we have leftover curry and we ran out of rice. And I thought, well, before I pack it up, what if I have a couple little seaweed bites with rice? It's such a great snack for me. I'm a savory snack person. It's healthy. It's easy. The rice is low waste. We get it at the bulk store, but I don't know how to make this plastic free because it's so sensitive to moisture. Anyway, I bought this months ago, but this is going in the jar. And if anybody has any tips on how to eat, you know what I can do? This would be insane. Nori grows on the Northern California coast. I could just go pluck some out of the ocean. Okay, let's see if it's, see how good it is. All that to say, if I can't find it plastic free, I'm not sure I can give it up. It's so good. I bought this forever ago and it's probably not going to run out this month, I hope. But this is another thing that I will continue to buy. Any sort of glue, any sort of repairing agent, even in plastic, because it's so much better to repair. I got this like vintage guide secondhand and it was falling apart, so I added some glue to the cracks. My pop socket kept falling off my phone, so I'm gluing the magnet back onto my phone case so that way I don't have to buy a new pop socket. So I think buying this little bottle of glue every now and then to repair so many different things is so much better for the planet than buying like a whole bunch of new stuff all the time because it's breaking all the time. It is D&D day. We are playing D&D online and usually we get takeout. Our usual go-to place is absolutely so much plastic. So instead, we are getting something that I know is going to be plastic free, it better be, it always has been thus far, and then I'm just going to put it in our fridge until we're hungry and then pan fry the burritos to warm them up later. We did it, Joe. Fully plastic free groceries, except for the stickers. But everything else, I refused produce bags, I bought stuff in the refill section that I wouldn't normally buy in the refill section, I refused the receipt. And I think this was one of the biggest points of the challenge for me is to remember that my refill store has so much available that I really just don't have to get as much in plastic as I thought I had. I did buy one thing not at the grocery store in plastic. And here's my justification, dye for a shirt that I have been wanting to dye for probably five years. I just haven't done it. And it's white and it's stained like no other. And so I thought the best way to salvage the shirt is to dye it and then I can still wear it. And again, this is a purchase I have been wanting to do for five years. And even if I didn't buy this in July, I was going to buy it in August. And so I thought, I'm going to purchase this regardless, I might as well do it now. So for me, I think that's kind of part of this whole challenge is that like, you know, if I'm already going to buy that item, you know, for healthcare needs for mending purposes like the glue also from the other day, like also this soap, it's from a small business here that's like really struggling to compete with big businesses. And I feel so good about giving them giving them my money. They are such a pillar of our community. They do so much good, ethically sustainably. So a little bit of plastic to support this amazing small business is fine with me as opposed to like buying soap packaged in paper from Dr. Bronner's a mega corporation that had to be shipped to me like this was made right here in my town. Stuff like that. Like, even if I didn't buy any of that soap in July, I would go right back to buying it in August. And that feels weird to me to like stop buying it just in July that it feels performative. So I think for me more of this challenge is exploring things like my impulses. I wanted snacks today because they were on sale at the grocery store. And I thought no, I only want them because they're on sale. I have snacks at home and they're in plastic. So it's helping me question my impulses and my overconsumption habits that I still have to break even though I've been working really hard to break those overconsumption habits. I still have work to do because I grew up in the United States of overconsumption. So that's that's it for me is addressing my overconsumption and figuring out swaps what plastic free swaps can I make this month and then sustain for my entire life like shopping at the refill store, for example, hopefully that all makes sense. A lot of rambling aside. I also went to the thrift store to get a frame. So this is plastic technically, but it's secondhand I feel fine about thrifting plastic all year long even for this challenge. I did I did get a new popsocket. It's an accessibility tool because I got a Kobo and I don't have one for my Kobo yet for me to be able to hold it so I can read without being in pain for the arthritis. So that's plastic but they have entirely plastic repackaging otherwise. Happy July 22nd my glasses will fix themselves. I was just outside plastic use today flea medication for mochi. If you didn't hear we had fleas in the house in October on both critters. It was traumatizing. We were using flea medication before that mind you but apparently that one doesn't work in our region. So we're on this new flea medication very strict about it every 22nd of every month that is not plastic. I'm willing to give up. It was way more plastic and way more energy and way more garbage to have fleas. I do have to make that stuff I mentioned yesterday, but I also have to make baked beans and by make I mean make from scratch. I didn't go to my normal grocery store this week. I went to the closer one and their baked beans were like $9 a can and these were $1 a piece. So I'm going to be making my own baked beans and I'm not going to be baking them. This should be plastic free. Some of the ingredients will have come in plastic but it's stuff that I already have in the in the pantry. So I don't care about that. I had my last cup of tofu yesterday and I am kind of sad about it not gonna lie. I'm not sure how I will be feeling about baked beans being my consistent breakfast for the next 10 days. I think I will desperately go back to tofu come August coffee from a local cafe. Oh, Dan surprised me with it. What an excellent surprise. I've got my secondhand book. Not that that has anything to do with plastic free July homemade sourdough. There was a piece there was a sticker on this Kiwi and then I think the only thing I used in plastic for the baked beans was ketchup. Oh and mustard. Let's um, we're not gonna burn my tongue. Okay, so we are gonna burn my tongue. Hmm. Okay. Actually not too sweet. I could use more spice and I love mustard, but this is too mustardy for baked beans. I would go a little less on the vinegar, a little less on the mustard, more spice. I think I did add a little bit of cornstarch to help thicken it. I think I would add a little bit more just to make it thicken because it is quite soupy and I like it to be like a little bit more. Anyway, I'm gonna enjoy my British breakfast, the breakfast of my ancestors. Can't beat sourdough toast. Okay. Goodbye. All right, gang. I was afraid of this. I can't do the baked beans like mentally. I just I can't do it today. Maybe tomorrow. Hopefully. If anything, Dan will be excited to help me eat them if I don't want to finish them, especially because I am prepping to make fresh bread today. Well, I was supposed to make it yesterday, but then I went over to a friend's house and so I have to make it today and I'm supposed to bake tomorrow, but I can't bake tomorrow because I'm in sailing class all day. That's a problem for tomorrow. I need bread. I have two pieces of toast left. So what I'm actually thinking is not having toast today. It like literally is making me gag. But what I can do, pancakes and the compote. And that sounds better. Yeah. Like some pancakes with peanut butter and compote. That sounds pretty good. I'm usually not a pancake person. The fact that I would rather have pancakes than the beans I made. The beans are fine. It's just I can't do it multiple days in a row. My toast, hummus, tofu, tomato, that is my safe breakfast. I've eaten it every single day for years. Just know that I am committing to Plastic Free July. I will make do with whatever I have in the house and I will get by for the next week. But August 1st, I'm going to be so excited to buy my hummus and tofu. I'm going right back to that. Breakfast is important. Eating is important. And especially eating like something that I will finish because it doesn't gross me out. And especially when I'm in school, being like that high protein really gets me through the day. Good morning. I'm doing sailing this weekend. So I got a few things. I got sunscreen. I couldn't find any Plastic Free at my local store and this is the cheapest. And I'm protecting my skin. I got Dan and I some kombuchas in glass, but with a plastic cap. Oops. And then I got, listen, I got more milk. I just really want a latte this morning and figured this was like a little bit more eco-friendly and obviously cheap, cheaper than getting a latte in my own cup, which there's plastic behind the scenes there too. And quite frankly, I'm in a rush. I didn't have time to make my own milk this morning, but I am making my own sourdough. I've got my loaves ready. Pans are in the oven. I'm having beans on toast and kiwi for breakfast. So wins and losses. And it's only 7.30. I am going to have some like gorilla bars during my class. It'll be hard to eat during the class Plastic Free, but I am bringing my own lunch. I'm bringing my own snacks, even though they do come in plastic. We'll see how it goes and we'll see if I can update you any on the sailing. Sailing was a success. I am incredibly sore. I got really bad rope burn on this finger. It's kind of swollen. My butt is so bruised. I must have like aggressively slid from the edge of the boat into the cockpit. It's so bad. Um, bruises all over this arm from riding myself after capsize. Anyway, I learned so much. It was fun despite some issues. I did litter. I littered on accident. I capsized immediately. I was still tied to the dock because I was not instructed on how to get into the boat properly. In my outhaul, one of my ropes was not properly secured to the sail and it fell right into the bay. Not Plastic Free. Not eco-friendly. Sorry, folks. I am tired. I am sore. And the last thing I want is beans on toast, quite frankly. So I'm going to head to the grocery store and seek out a breakfast burrito and paper and probably get a coffee in my reusable cup. And then I have to get to work. Here's my to-do list before my mom comes to town. Tomorrow. Let's get to it today. It should be a Plastic Free day. Otherwise? What do I mean otherwise? It should be a Plastic Free day. I'm going to go get some Plastic Free breakfast. So, let's go. It should also go down as a Plastic Free day. I'm making breakfast now. I'm going to do beans on toast. Well, I should say an entirely single-use Plastic Free day because I am going to go to my local, like, soap store and I need to get myself some more shampoo and then I need to get Dan slash my mom's visiting their shampoo. I used a different one for the blue. And they will come in plastic, but my local soap store takes the plastic bottles back to refill. I don't know. I think I said at the beginning of the challenge I was going to focus on all plastic, but they don't sell their shampoo in other bottles. So I'm going to use these. I think maybe a challenge this weekend, which will be August technically, but I still want to take my lessons learned. Like, I don't want to go right back into all of my wasteful habits. I want to still maintain some things that I learned. Anyway, so we're hosting people on Saturday to play games with my mom. I'm going to see how much I can do Plastic Free snacks for that. I think I've talked about this already in this video. We have friends with many different dietary needs. Nut allergy, gluten allergy, onion and garlic allergy. Of course, keeping my friends safe is the priority, but if I can do all of that plus be Plastic Free, what a great bonus. Shout out to the thrift store. I did get some stuff that was plastic. This container for our new kitchen that we're getting. A new mouse because my wireless mouse broke, so I got a wired mouse thrifted. And then a new oil sprayer. I'm excited to try because Misto failed on me a couple years ago, and it came with this bubble wrap. Oh, also yesterday, I did get a package from Thrift Books, and I have another package arriving today. So yeah, it's kind of, you know, a little bit of a shame that when I buy stuff second hand online, it often comes in plastic, but I'm not giving up second hand shopping online. I shop in person as much as I can, but I can't always find everything in person. So anyway, that's the update. Okay, I'm at the store because my current deodorant has been irritating me, so I need to find a new one, ideally Plastic Free. Here we have, this one was pretty good before, but I'm not terribly a fan of these. They usually make me still stinky. And then we have, this is our other Plastic Free option, so I might try one of these. Hello, everyone. This is not all of my plastic that I used in July, but Plastic Free July is over, and I have to say I'm glad for it. I traveled the first week of August with my mom. My mom came to town, and then my sister. We both went to go see my sister in Colorado. And yeah, wow, it is so easy to be Plastic Free where I live. Plastic Free, enough. I have a bulk store, I have a farmer's market, all of that. Going to see my sister right after Plastic Free July was over, and I was like so focused on reducing my waste, was such an eye opener because she lives in rural Colorado. She does not have a place to cook, she does not have a place to compost, she does not have a bulk store, a zero waste store, any of that. Really eye opening to me to see that you can't be Plastic Free anywhere, and even in the most Plastic Free eco-friendly places in the world, I still could not be perfect. Exhibit A. This was all from Dan, the photos that he ordered for the county fair, and most of our stuff in here is packaging waste from ordering stuff in the mail. A few snacky things in here, some fruit snacks, some granola bars, some butter, some gin gins, some gum, so many receipts, so many fruit stickers. So I would say for me, the hardest ones to avoid are packaging waste. Even when I'm shopping online second hand, like such an eco-friendly thing to do, still comes with plastic waste, receipts, and fruit stickers. I'm also really glad for this challenge to be over because I'm reverting back to my breakfast. I cannot even describe how excited I was this morning to eat my breakfast of my toast with hummus and tofu. I feel satiated, I feel full, I feel satisfied. I do think though while traveling, I still for sure thought about, do I really need that piece of plastic? Did I indulge a little bit on this trip because it was a vacation? Yeah. I got a lot of drinks in plastic, I should have brought my reusable cup, that was my bad for sure. But there were other times where I was in the airport, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I should buy this, I should buy this, I'm hungry, I want a snack. No, I have a snack in my bag. I brought an apple, that was totally plastic free except for the sticker, and I brought some granola bars from home. And then also while out with my mom and my sister, I thought about how can we do lunch in the most eco-friendly way? How can I ensure that we collectively eat all this food at this table so that way we don't have to get a plastic to-go container? All that sort of stuff. So all these thoughts are still in my mind after this challenge. I totally also got to see why people give up living zero waste and feel the burnout of being fully zero waste, fully plastic free, fully vegan. If you try to strive for that perfection every single day, so easy to burn out. It's a hard line to tow, I get that. Because I'm not saying that everybody should over-consume because it makes them happy. I'm not saying that everybody should indulge in all these wasteful activities because it makes them happy. I think we all have a responsibility to bear some of the brunt of working together and stewarding this planet and doing good things, but I also think that we shouldn't be burdening ourselves beyond measure, and I don't think that we should be putting all that pressure on ourselves to be perfect and then never enjoying anything in life again. When I'm on vacation and I forgot my reusable cup at home, and I still want to get a little coffee, I will go to a local coffee shop versus a big chain. I will get oat milk. A fully plastic cup, I will rinse it out and I will recycle it. All of those are imperfect, but they're all better than going to like Starbucks and getting dairy and throwing the cup away. Even if you do something wasteful, you can still minimize your impact while doing wasteful things. You can still get your sweet treat, you can still enjoy your life without having the full burden of all of this on you. Without it being like, well, you know, the world's burning anyway, there are billionaires out there doing horrible, more horrible things than me, so I should just go to Starbucks every day. No, there's a line. I'm not saying this to make excuses for myself and my wasteful or unwasteful habits. Becoming so stressed about, I don't want to order that book secondhand on thrift books because it comes in plastic is silly. I don't, I haven't ordered from Amazon, especially, I don't know if I've ever ordered a book on Amazon, period. I know Amazon's been doing a lot to do paper packaging. So if a book from Amazon comes in paper packaging, you might see that as better because it's no plastic. But I see thrift books as better because it's secondhand and it's a small business or smaller than Amazon. And same with like this came from some Gorilla Glue that we use to fix our table instead of throwing the entire table away. That's way more eco friendly and stuff like that. Like figuring out that some plastic is inevitable to take an eco action. Does the plastic totally cancel out the eco action? No. Do I wish companies use better packaging? Absolutely. But hopefully you see that that's not my fault. It is the fault of the companies for not providing me with eco options. We only have access to what we have access to, we have to work with what we've got. But just knowing that had I been living where my sister lives all of July, I would have several garbage bags full of plastic. No fault to the people who live there, but fault to the system that we have built that have put these people in this place that they don't have eco actions, they don't have eco options to take. It's just kind of like reinvigorated me to be more of an advocate for eco accessibility for everyone. I think we should all have access as far as we possibly can to composting, to recycling, to refill stores to public transportation, instead of having to rely on these wasteful systems that keep us stuck in these wasteful loops damage our own health and health of the planet. And none of us deserve that we all deserve to live on a clean planet. I'm still gonna do my part. I'm still gonna do my individual actions here where I live and do as much as I can to reduce plastic waste to reduce single use materials in general, because plastic is definitely the worst single use material, but the other ones aren't great either. If they're single use, you can learn more in this video, it's so much better to reuse your glass, your metal, your paper, your plastic even than it is to throw it away or recycle it because recycling is so broken. Me doing an eco action here does impact the health of the overall planet and the health of everybody else throughout the world. It has really taught me to be mindful about my overconsumption. I'm still a work in progress. I had grew up in the US where overconsumption is normalized and it is encouraged. And still every single day, I have to work on these habits. Anyway, thank you for following along with me and staying with me all the way to the end because I know that this was a long video. I appreciate you coming along for the entire month. I hope that you've learned something. Let us know down below if you partook in this challenge as well. What challenges did you face? What wins did you see? And how are you going to be doing a plastic free ish life moving forward? Obviously I'm not perfect and I don't like to use label plastic free because I'm not. I'm just still mind blown. This is the amount of plastic I used shopping at the farmer's market in the bulk store all month long. Using my reusable cup, using my reusable water bottle, making food from scratch all month long. This is still not even all of the plastic I used. A lot of the plastic in our lives is totally avoidable, but a lot of it is not. So don't beat yourself up. Your small actions absolutely matter. Keep doing them. But for now, once again, thank you for watching. I truly, truly appreciate your time, especially on long videos like this. These unsexy topics that the algorithm doesn't like. So if you liked it, please don't forget to give it a thumbs up down below. Let us know something about plastic free July down below. If anything, just leave an emoji, the recycling emoji down below. If you're new here, don't forget to hit subscribe. I would love to have you over here on this channel more often. And at the end of the day, please remember that truly your small actions really do have a big impact in the long run. Bye guys. Well, this challenge does not demand perfection. That sounded too close to Hamilton. The challenge demands satisfaction. Let us know down below if you partaked.