Reducing Plastics

As a former Tupperware salesperson, my house is just filled to the rafters with plastic items. Tupperware is pretty good quality, and with the consultant discounts, I got some great deals on stuff that should've lasted pretty much forever. Not a bad deal, huh? Well, until I started hearing about the dangers of plastics from a Green perspective. And, specifically, the dangers of BPAs (Bisphenol-A) and what happens when plastic is heated with food in it and the dangers that can come from it. I really liked this article (pdf) that describes issues with BPAs potentially altering hormones, and the different types of plastics and their dangers. The Tupperware that was heating my food in comes under the worst category of plastics in terms of safety (or lack thereof). As part of going Green, I've wanted to get rid of the plastics in my home that I use for cooking and eating. (Our dishes were Tupperware as well, so I'm constantly reheating things on them.) But when you're also trying to safe money, not go into debt, and spend money wisely, it does seem stupid to spend money to replace something that is perfectly good and useful. But it came down to caring for my health (which I do) versus how "perfectly good" the products were in line with my values. I've been slowly replacing stuff. We went to the Corningware store at North Bend outlet stores about 6 months ago and bought a few food storage containers to see how they would work for us. And then we went to another store and bought glass drinking glasses to replace the plastic ones. My husband is like a bull in a china shop, so I worried about him with glass. But it's gone well and I was ready to go to the next level. I went back a few weeks ago and bought some more storage containers, plus they had a sale on some baking dishes and I bought some of them. The last thing to replace was the dishes. We argued over what was an attractive Corelle pattern to buy, and did we really want to spend $80-$100 to replace "perfectly good" (plastic) dishes. Today we were out and about and went to the Auburn Supermall and the Corningware/Corelle outlet. I am still in awe that we agreed on dishes and they were on sale! This is what we ended up with, a pattern called Shadow Grasses. We also learned that comparing Corelle prices and boxes is like comparing apples and oranges. Apparently some 16 piece, service for 4, boxes contain large and medium plates. Some contain large and small plates. So you'd find something that looked like a good deal, but then find out it had saucers that you didn't need/want and if you had to add to it with open stock, it wasn't really worth it. So we were sitting there like the geeks were were, adding things up on our PDA calculators, trying to figure the best deal. Then we saw this pattern, saw that the 16 piece set had large and medium plates (which we wanted), and that because it was on sale, it cost as much to buy 2 sets of them as what we were going to do with another pattern, which was buy a set of 4 and then a few open stock pieces to get service for 6. So I'm happy with our purchase and I'm listening to the dishwasher purr along, cleaning our new dishes! I'm going to be taking the Tupperware and putting it aside for our church garage sale. I'm sure there are a lot of people who want some good prices on Tupperware and who don't care (or know) about the plastic issues. We'll probably give away the new Corelle mugs too - we have more than enough mugs. Perhaps, since they're brand new, we can hold onto them for the church auction in the fall - those are more new, pricey items than a garage/rummage sale. We'll see.