No Plastic Vow - Day 3

Day three started with overcoming the anticipated hurdle of getting a lease agreement form printed without replacing my printer cartridge. My husband also needed to have a movie script scanned, so he called the local Staples to find out if they do that service. They said they could scan it for $0.25 per page, which is definitely worth not having me wrestle with the scanner over 119 pages. While he had them on the phone, he asked if they had rental forms, and if they were sold as individual pages or if they were packaged. The girl responded that they were packaged. He figured the week was over then, but instead we went online, purchased a downloadable lease agreement from a law firm, saved it on his handy-dandy thumb drive, and took it with us to Staples.

The girl there turned out to be a former student of his at OSU. There was kind of an odd energy about that for a moment, and then she started asking questions about what we wanted done with our scanning. After that was squared away, Sean asked her if she could print our forms, to which she said, "yes." Then he proclaimed, "And we need not to have any plastic!" The girl positively got the giggles. He might as well have told her she needed to paint herself blue and hop on one foot while scanning our pages. I have no idea what struck her so funny. She looked at me for the first time, and I nodded assent. When all the scanning and printing was done, we went to the cash register to pay, and she said, "So....do you want a...pa-per bag?" "No bag, thanks," we said, and cheerfully took our papers out the door. That was kind of fun.

The real issue came when we got home, and I started to wonder when my daughter was going to call and ask to come home from her sleep over. That led to wondering where on Earth I had left my cell phone, which led to my husband calling it to help me locate it. His call went directly to voice mail. Uh oh. I had just charged it the night before, so it wasn't turned off. I immediately began to wonder if it had gone through the laundry. We looked in all of the usual hiding places to no avail. Then, yes, it was at the bottom of a very wet load of clothes in the washing machine. I had just turned down an offer for a new phone with renewal of my Verizon contract. I told the guy, "I like my phone, and I think it would be wasteful to get a new one just to make you guys feel better. I'll tell you what, I've been your customer for years, and I fully intend to renew, without you bribing me with a new phone. Does that make you feel good enough?" He said thanks, it did. And now, I've put the phone through the laundry for the second time in it's two year lifespan. And, it still works.

Going through our drawers and piles of craft supplies this weekend, I found five old phones waiting to be recycled. They aren't all mine, but it did bring a bewildered laugh to look at the pile. Actually, now that I think of it, there is one more in my husband's car. So, I looked up places to recycle them. There are all kinds of cell phone recycling opportunities, and some even support charities. Just type in "cell phone donation" to Google, and you're off. I also found this article about a cell phone made entirely of recycled plastic. The phone company also trades Carbon credits for some extra enviro feel-good marketing. Check it out at:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/ces-2009-motorola-launches-the-first-carbon-neutral-cell-phone.php.

Now, on to Day 4. The big challenges: making it through the work day without plastic wrappers and to go-containers and beginning to learn to make our own cheese - the one thing we really can't buy without plastic.