Start as you mean to go on

I had my first starbucks of 2009 today, and mighty good it was too! I'm not calling it a resolution, however I have decided that I am spending too much money on coffee, and I'm aiming to try and cut down my starbucks expenditure this year. I think I'll take a leaf out of wingpig's book and start taking my Thermos flask to work with my own home-made coffee, even if it does require getting up five minutes earlier in the morning :)

As a side note, continued the cleaning that was started yesterday and proceeded to unbox all of the toiletries gift packs that I had received at christmas (from the looks of things, my family are trying to tell me that I smell bad). What is the deal with the packaging on those things? Not content with enclosing a can of deodorant and shower gel in a cardboard box, it first has to be placed in a little as-yet-unrecyclable plastic tray to make look more presentable when the cardboard is ripped open, and then it has to then be further enclosed in a layer of razor sharp as-yet-unrecyclable plastic, just to make it extra gift-like and christmas-y. It's not even fancy stuff, so why the need for all of the excess packaging which can't even be recycled? I was also doubly miffed with one such gift pack wherein the cardboard box had metal eyelets in it for no reason other than decoration. I had to spend 10 minutes cutting out the eyelets just so the bloody thing could go in the cardboard recycling. I wonder what percentage of christmas waste packaging goes unrecycled - I'm guessing it's horrific.