April 6, 2020

by drplasticpicker

This blog series is monthly. This month I am 5 days late. Forgive me as there is this thing called a pandemic going on. But in all seriousness, I am so happy to be forced to write a non-COVID19 post. When I started this blog called Dr. Plastic Picker, I really wanted it to be more about Plastic Picker – but it’s become more about Dr these days. I try to deny it, but I am one and am doing my due dilligence these days to be a competent one. In fact, I held the On-Call COVID Pediatric walkie-talkie for our large outpatient building today. I decided my code name is Dr. Spock and I asked the nursing manager to call me that when she needed me. This is why this series is so important, because it keeps my tangential brain on earth and not in outerspace. This series keeps me accountable for making real changes in our lives that are good for the environment. I am responsible for reporting out monthly 15 changes that I have made in our daily lives that help the environment.

How did I do last month? I only got to 10 things. Yesterday I spent the day writing and editing a post about a dear physician friend who died of suicide and my thoughts about him https://drplasticpicker.com/an-anatomy-lab-partner-lost-what-would-chris-have-thought-about-physician-sacrifice-and-covid-19/. I know this is not the typical Dr. Plastic Picker happy-go-lucky-eco-conscious-pediatrician post, but I felt driven to write that piece. It was wrenching and I cried so much during the revisions. I felt it was strong enough to send to KevinMD and is being published tomorrow in a shortenend version. I never thought the writing part of blogging would become so important to me. Mr. Plastic Picker helped me edit the piece, and some of his edits made me very angry. I think it was more that I was attached to my memories of my anatomy partner, and I felt my story of him was being altered. So I re-edited it and the end product was the better for it. I appreciate my dear husband’s input. I think it’s a strong piece, but spending on and off the entire day writing was emotionally exhausting.

But this post is super fun! And super fast to write! I only got to 10 things but that is okay. At least I tried. It is so important to forgive oneself. So here are the 10 things we did for the environment in March 2020. I’m just going to list in how I input it into my iphone notes section.

List of 10 Secondary Environmental Net Positives (March 2020).

1. Repaired One Pair of Leather Shoes. I have a pair of wedge work sandals that are hand-me-down from my mother. I wear then maybe once a month. A part of the seam was coming off and I hot glue gunned it back on. Hopefully it holds for another few months.
2. One Trash Bag Made from Plastic Scraps: Yes, I hot glue gunned scraps of preCOVID19 plastic to make a plastic bag liner for our daughter’s room. It amused me, but I incorporated it into a blogpost that was accepted to KevinMD. Its is one of my better pieces if you want to check it out https://drplasticpicker.com/covid-19-social-distancing-is-like-bedrest-kevinmd-version/. It got shared 152 times! Pretty cool.
3. Plugged In Car at Hospital Charging Station: Got my act together early enough in the morning to charge my plug-in hybrid on time 3 times.
4. Twelve Rolls of Recycled Toilet Paper: We have a new box of 50 Who Gives A Cr@p Toilet paper, but given the great TP hoarding – I could not help myself. I saw a roll of 12 recycled paper toilet rolls at Sprouts and bought in.
5. Four Plastic Paint Tubes Returned: Our daughter participated in the County’s History Day Competition. It required a lot of paint. Mr. Plastic Picker took her multiple times to Michaels. We are usually not the best family for returning unused things. We usually let it accumulate or donate it. But this time I made sure to return it to Michaels because I thought it was the best way to reduce our plastic consumption.
6. French Press! Mr. Plastic Picker finally gave up the Keurig single-use coffee pods. He had drastically reduced it already but now switched over completely to a French Press and we have one reusable Keurig coffee-pod. That is actually a really impactful change. I need to give us more credit! Click to hear about Mr. Plastic Picker’s environmental journey https://drplasticpicker.com/mr-plastic-pickers-environmental-journey/
7. Local Coffee Shop: We have made a new committment to bypass Starbucks and going to local coffee shops. We’ve had one visit to a local shop which has great locally-made pastries as well
8. Four Showers Averted: With the quarantine order I am not sweating as much. So spaced out the showering when we were home on the weekends to 1.5 days. So saved water by averted 4 showers.
9. Four Vegan Muffins: I am trying to motivate our family to eat more plant based, so I will start giving us credit for more sustainable food choices.
10. Two Oat-Milk Cartons: The kids still drink cows milk but we are subbing in for sustainable milk options. The kids like the Oat-Milk from Sprouts.

So that is all for this month! We made 10 positive changes for March 2020. For April 2020, we will be in quaratine still. It has been a difficult time for everyone and yesterday we ate at El Pollo Loco Take Out. I had forgotten how good the food is there. I realized we hadn’t eaten there since I adopted this alter ego eight months ago! But in a moment of weakness yesterday we gave in. No worries. We will remain strong for the month. My goal for next month April 2020, given the ongoing pandemic, is really just 10 positive changes for April 2020. It is important to be realistic.