Earth Day 2018

Cover of earthday.org Plastic PollutionPrimer andAction Toolkit

I've been meaning to do this. Ever since my friend Jhing encouraged me to be plastic-free, I have always this little guilt within me everytime I throw a single used plastic. I fear that my used plastic straw will end up in the nose of a turtle. Or worse, my used plastic bag will be eaten by a fish and eventually this fish will be served on my plate.

Sea Turtle with plastic straw stucked in its nose.
Picture from: www.telegraph.co.uk

So every now and then Im thinking of ways how to reduce my use of plastic. And everytime I think of my love of baking, I always feel discouraged. Why? Because baking is literally making a mess in the kitchen. A flour dust on the floor... A splash of melted chocolate on the counter... A spilled batter in the stove... A sink full of dishes to be washed... But these are all okay. Because we can still clean and wipe the mess up and our kitchen will be spotless again. But how about the greased parchment paper (FYI, though it is called paper, it has a thin wax lining that makes it non-stick) we use to bake our favorite cookies. Cling wraps to seal the moisture of our moist and densed chocolate cakes. And what about the disposable piping bags that we use to decorate our homebaked birthday cakes! These things creeps up to my mind everytime I want to go plastic-free. How in the world could I do what I love when I also want to help mother nature? But I just realized, I'm just feeling lazy because there are tons of baking tools that are reusable and can replace disposable tools in the baking world.

Since today is Earth Day, I will take a stand and vow that I will lessen my use of disposable plastics, hence, my new blog name "less waste baker", while doing what I love to do which is homemade baking. I will post my journey here and hopefully encourage many and my family too, which I think is the most difficult to do.