Sunday, May 30, 2021

Snapshots: A Horse, a Girl, and Plastic Tea

Let's see what stunning photography I managed this week, shall we?


A happily grazing horse. Between the horse and the sheep, we provide many free weed whackers as a courtesy to the fellow residents of our ghost-village. 


This time of year, I get my wildflower bouquets on the table, and Poppy gets her wildflower hair accessories. Everyone's happy. (This is a weird angle and picture because she was sitting on my lap at the time.)

I buy quite a few pantry staples from Walmart periodically, but my most recent order came not with giant tubs of peanut butter and olive oil, but with a giant box of this:


Definitely not peanut butter.

I got a box full of plastic cups filled with plastic herb tea "sachets." A total of 400 sachets, as a matter of fact, of the "Jade Mint" and "Peach Tranquility" variety. Still not sure how my order was replaced with this, but Walmart told me to keep the tea and didn't charge me for it.

That's nice. I guess. Except I am not dropping tea encased in plastic mesh into hot water for imbibing. Yuck. So I painstakingly cut a bunch of the sachets and poured the tea into mason jars. This left me with a lot of plastic waste.


Gross.

The cup part has a lid, so I washed those out and will use them to hand around snacks in the car, I suppose. 

I brought about 20 of those cups up to the post office and put them out for anyone to take. They were all taken, so that's good. 

Still upset about the packaging on those, though. Not that I'm even close to zero-waste, but that was just ridiculous. It's a Starbucks brand, by the way. 

Yes, I'm calling you out, Starbucks.

And there you have it! My life, snapshotted. 

6 comments:

Kit said...

I quit buying a brand of tea because they changed the packaging and there was so much waste. Now I buy a different brand online that comes in a big box full of tea bags without so much as a staple or tag on the bags. There was just too much in the trash when I unpacked the other brand, and I'm certainly not zero trash either.

Wonder what happened to your peanut butter and olive oil?

Anonymous said...

Yes, where is your peanut butter & olive oil?
Linda

mil said...

I bought a box of Bigelow green tea bags at BJs, and I am consistently irritated by the individually wrapped tea bags--some sort of plastic foil-like substance. I have resolved to buy loose tea and forget the convenience of tea bags, tempting as it is.

Kristin @ Going Country said...

Kit and Linda: I'm still unclear about where the mixup occurred, but they re-ordered and sent (at no charge, of course) the items that were still in stock when I notified them of the mistake, and refunded me for the ones that weren't in stock. Apparently we're in another weird grocery phase where things sell out in a matter of 48 hours? I don't know. I will say, though, that I've been ordering pantry items from Walmart for a few years now, and this is only the second time I've had a problem. The first time was when a bottle of lemon juice leaked in transit. They let me keep that one too, and sent me a free replacement. Their customer service is actually good, so there's that.

Anonymous said...

Good to know about Walmart, Kristin.
Linda

Karen. said...

Whoa, the tea thing is crazy. I've heard of similar things with Amazon, but this is a first on Walmart, and also, alllll that plastic. Ugh.