…Attempt to Recycle. Or, Our Lenten Adventure in Reducing Plastic Dependence

This post has been weighing on me heavily for some time. I haven’t been sure how to approach it – should I make a list of all the ways we tried to reduce our plastic consumption over Lent 2019? Should I do a How To? Should I just rant about the state of the world? What would be most useful?

When we started our Lenten discipline this year, I wanted to do something that would help focus our whole family. Focus is hard for 3 and 5 year old boys, and so is waiting. So, also, is giving things up. In the end, I figured out what we would do in a single moment in the grocery store: watching a woman unload her cart in front of me with her vegetables in neat little reusable mesh bags.

“Those look cool,” I said. “Where did you find them?”

“Oh, I can’t even remember any more!” she replied. “But I use them all the time! I can wash them in the washing machine and the mesh is fine enough for bulk items!”

I can do that. That’s one small way I can reduce our impact. We buy a lot of produce! We could reduce our plastic use for Lent!

I was so excited that I got on Amazon as soon as we got home. That was when I found out it was going to be harder than just buying a few bags. People take their natural living very seriously. On the bags that looked most useful for our family (they could double as wetbags for stinky bike clothes or long underwear post-skiing! and hold our broccoli during grocery trips!), reviewers criticized that the bags weren’t made of sustainable materials, were shipped with too much plastic, had plastic pulls, etc. Buy sustainable fair-trade cotton biodegradable bags! they advised. So I looked those up. At five or six times as expensive as the other bags, their mesh was also either nonexistent (so you couldn’t see through the bags, which I felt would be a huge hindrance in the checkout line) or so big I was afraid anything smaller than an apple would fall through. More expensive and less useful. I ordered my planet-killing polyester bags.

I’d love it if my story ended here, but it doesn’t. After I decided we’d stop using the plastic produce bags at the store, I decided we should probably stop using plastic lunch bags, too, because those are fairly easy to avoid AND I found some pretty cute reusable sandwich bags. Then I found BeesWrap, which I love because it smells good and functions much like plastic wrap. It’s also very expensive, so we have….three. But they are in constant use!

These were all easy changes to make. They were all instagram-friendly. The kids were excited to have new stuff. The velcro on the sandwich and snack bags was easier for them to unseal and reseal than Ziplock baggies. It felt like everyone was winning! Except… these were all additions. I didn’t feel like we’d really given up anything — we’d just added some new things to our lives. Adding is easier than taking away.

There was still SO MUCH PLASTIC in our lives. Well-meaning friends saw my lovely instagram posts and sent me links to articles about going plastic free, which sounded super amazing. I’d feel good about myself and save the planet! But the truth is, I didn’t want to throw out all my plastic (doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of going plastic free — creating less waste?); I didn’t want to feed my family on dried legumes and produce that was in season in New Hampshire in February. To buy meat, you have to buy in plastic. To buy produce – sometimes to buy the only palatable produce – you have to buy in plastic occasionally. I didn’t want my kids to hate food.

So, here is where we came down on it, it in the end: we reduce where we can, reasonably. During the summer, we will use our reusable bags to collect produce from the CSA; during the winter, we buy what we can at the farmer’s market and do our best with what we can find at the grocery store. We buy our milk locally, in glass jars that are reused. We buy in bulk when it’s possible (and I do have two organic sustainable cotton bulk bags for this purpose specifically) and in recyclable containers when possible, but sometimes it’s not possible, and I have to put things in my cart and shut my inner critical self up a little.

Things that come in plastic that I’m not willing to give up include Greek yogurt, frozen fruit, berries, and meat. Where we can’t avoid plastic packaging, I try to buy the largest size possible, so that we’re at least reducing our overall waste. I’ve also started re-using single-use plastic. It makes me feel like my parents, penny-pinching, but there’s no reason to throw plastic containers into the recycling bin immediately. Many large plastic bags can be washed, dried, and reused – I still use ziplock for the bread we make, because I freeze one loaf to reheat halfway through the week, but I’ve been using the same bag for three months! Turning single-use plastic products into multi-use items might be the biggest shift in thinking I’ve had over the past few months — but it’s also, absolutely, the easiest place to start.

The kids made three huge sacrifices that I only occasionally buy for them now: drinkable yogurts (in those awful packets or in the recyclable bottles, because don’t get me started on the problems in the plastic recycling stream), packaged bread products (we make two loaves of soft honey wheat bread at home every week now), and granola bars. At first, I tried to make granola bars. After I became the only one who ate the homemade bars, I stopped making such a huge effort, and instead focused on reducing the amount we bought (each boy picks one box of snack and one box of granola/fruit bars a week from the store). I’m clearly not “hardcore” into reducing our waste. I’m more interested in staying sane and getting SOME fiber and probiotics into my children.

And, in all honesty, these small steps have noticeably cut down on our waste. We throw away less plastic, but we also just throw away less. Fewer wrappers, fewer food scraps. Picking plastic as a focus got us focused on reducing our all-around waste. I’m even more deliberate about my grocery shopping and cooking now. I put the kids’ uneaten crackers back in the box and they don’t notice. [Don’t tell them!] We’ve gotten to talk to our children about where garbage goes, and where recycling goes, and about what it means to take care of the world around us.

We had a real, whole-family, Lenten discipline. It focused us on God, and on all the gifts we’ve been given in this beautiful world. It gave us a way to take some small care of these gifts, to be grateful, to think about what was important to each of us. I don’t have Instagram-worthy shelves, but I’m happy to know that I’m throwing away less and enjoying more.

Now that cold weather has moved in to stay for a few months here in the Northeast, I’ve moved my training inside. I still got a few delightful rides in late fall, and our season was gloriously extended with an awesome Trek Travel trip to Provence, but I’m feeling the need to hibernate now! Today I’ll talk briefly about my gravel/trainer bike and spin routine.

First, the bike: I ride an old Trek 1000 SL aluminum frame bike indoors. We bought it used specifically to throw on our Wahoo Kickr Snap trainer because we didn’t want to stress the frame of my carbon road bike. It was atrocious to ride with a cranky triple chainwheel and jumpy rear cassette; on the trainer, it rode only slightly better than on the road, where the chain frequently derailed and almost never shifted smoothly, if it stayed on at all. For some reason that still confounds me, this terrible bicycle’s previous owner rode it in a triathlon.

There she is, in all her original awfulness. At least the seat is comfortable? 

My compassionate husband brought the bike to Tooky Wheelworks, where we took off the gosh-awful drivetrain and set the bike up with an elliptical chainring in the front and bigger cassette in the back (with the idea that during warmer weather I’d be able to haul my toddlers behind it in the Burley; we weren’t going for speed as much as power). He also wrapped my handlebars in some KILLER orange tape – I couldn’t ask for my training bike to look more awesome! But because the bike’s speed with the new gearing maxed out at around 18mph, it was still frustrating to free-ride on the trainer; even inside, I couldn’t build much momentum, so last winter I pretty much exclusively rode with Zwift’s training programs so that I didn’t have to touch the shifters; the trainer adjusts resistance under my back wheel for me.

This summer, we went back to Tooky Wheelworks for another complete overhaul; I wanted a gravel bike, and the aluminum frame seemed like the way to go for a couple of reasons.  First, I really disliked the chatter through my carbon frame road bike when we were on gravel, and the skid of the skinny back wheel. Second, the kids didn’t tolerate the Burley at all, and I was frustrated with the useless low speed of the Trek. Back to the shop! Now she has a sweet crankset and completely new rear cassette and derailleur. Her bottom-of-the-line Shimano shifters got an upgrade, and new wheels (with knobby tire in the back!) carried her over gravel like a dream. After a near-crash experience with the awful caliper brakes, we replaced them, too.

First spin with the new drivetrain!

Now that I like the drivetrain on my bike, it’s changed my indoor riding, too. I can free-ride on the Zwift app and shift smoothly; I don’t *have* to follow a training program. For the first few indoor rides of this fall, I did just that, exploring Zwift’s new New York scenery and enjoying powering through climbs, thrilled with the differentials on my bike. But the grind of indoor riding – being stuck in one place is hard on the hips and the mind – has gotten to me, and I need to start an actual training program so I actually have a goal. Between now and Christmas, I’m working through the FTP booster; two weeks of a nasty upper respiratory virus have left me weak, and I need to get my cardio endurance back up and running.

So I’ll pose the question to you: what would you do next? We are toying with the idea of doing some cross country mountain bike races  next fall, but that’s still a long way off. I’d like to hit spring ready to climb and stronger than I left fall (avg pwr on smooth road rides around 135w). With other workouts, yoga, skiing, kids, and cooking on my plate, I reasonably have time to ride 3-4x a week for 1-1 1/2h if I’m really dedicated.

What shall we do next, my friend?