My plastic-free challenge is going good since I try to recycle all the time and I use reusable dishes and silverware to eat!

My starting point in this challenge is that plastic recycling is a hoax allowing the plastics (petroleum) industry to pretend it's ok to keep making daily mountains of dangerous waste. Even the industry says they don't want us recycling #3,4,6 or 7 plastics. According to California's lawsuit against ExxonMobil, only about 5% of plastic waste in the United States is recycled, and the recycling rate has never exceeded 9%. So I muddle along trying not to encase every tomato or apple I buy into its own produce bag, and look for other ways to avoid single use plastic. But I feel beaten down by how impossible our champions of business have made it to avoid creating plastic waste.

started the challenge strong by estimating my plastic footprint. I'm at about 30 lbs of plastic per year. I'm sure it's actually higher than that given the durable plastic goods that come and go in life. I think my biggest opportunity for improvement are plastic-packaged foods.