We actually had another flurry of unpacking while I had a bit of an energy burst and the house is starting 'be back normal' as Annie put it. I also had a collection of glass pasta and jam jars that needed washing which got me back to thinking about one of my New Year's goals - creating no trash.

We avoid lots of plastics and disposable paper and really don't make much trash at all. All of it is that flimsy food packaging or sometimes small styrofoam stuff. This includes bread bags, meat packaging and small bags for produce and bulk things, and we make about a half a medium kitchen bag a week, at most. While this is better than the typical 4.6 pounds per person per day that most people make, I am a perfectionist. It's nothing... or nothing? lol We do reuse some bags for John's lunch but what about all the little scraps of plastic that fill up the trash?

So I spent two days researching and reading and reading and eating and more reading, and the best application for paper and plastic scraps is either art or jewelry. Everything else ends up with plastic fumes or other toxic problems. I found this video:



Applying this to plastic with a hot glue gun might be really easy. Even better... how many tiny plastic balls would I have to make to be able to fill a homemade bean bag chair? It would be a long term project but would last forever. Now I just need to find a way to store this plastic so I can pursue my incredibly anal obsessive new hobby.