Saturday, May 3, 2008

Plastic-less Trash Bags?

Lately I've been feeling a bit guilty every time I take out the trash. All these eco-friendly blogs pointing out the horrible impact of plastic on our environment have made me consider other options but I don't know what to do about this.
We have no yard so composting is out of the question. There's no recycling and I have no idea where a recycling center is. With the price of gas and my propensity for getting lost, I'm not convinced I'll save anything looking for one, but even if I do, how does that eliminate the need for plastic to line the kitchen can? Do people simply throw trash in it and clean the can every time? I don't have outside water either.
There's probably a very obvious, simple solution, what did people do BEFORE plastic? Of course, they didn't have so much packaging to deal with then either. Perhaps there's some kind of decomposable liner, cheap for throwing away though. I bet there is, I'm going to look in the eco blogs and find something!

4 comments:

Amy said...

hey! that's a good question. i'm quite sure my parents never used plastic liners because they were so thrifty but honestly i can't remember! short of rinsing out the can every day, i just can't think of an alternate choice! if you find one, let me know. we can all do our part!

btw, thanks for stopping by on my blog!

Unknown said...

I know exactly what you mean. We have a kitchen garbage can from the container store that is designed to use plastic shopping bags so we re-use. It bothers me a little too because sometimes we deliberately don't bring our tote bags to the grocery store because we run out of plastic bags for garbage. Crazy.
We need some good alternatives. I'll check back and see if you find any.

Savvy Mom said...

So far I haven't found anything. I use the small plastic bags in the bathrooms but for the kitchen? Still it's all plastic.
I talked to a friend of mine and was reminded that we always used to use the paper grocery bags - but I'm not sure that's much better - all those trees! Isn't saving trees why we went to plastic in the first place?

B said...

I don't think there are any easy solutions to this problem. All i know is I couldnt clean out the trash can everytime! I appreciate your comment btw :)