Plastic Makes it…Challenging
Vitamin bottles. Cheap shoes. Cosmetic containers. Computers and electronics. Corn chips. Anything you buy at Trader Joe’s. Most toys. Rice Dream moon pies.
What do these things have in common? They are a very short list of things that our family will miss if we take a pledge to reduce or eliminate our plastic consumption.
I’ve been disillusioned about plastic for a long time. The primary reason being that it takes 500 years to biodegrade. Oh but wait, new research shows that it breaks down quite fast in the ocean. As it does this, it creates a toxic soup of BPAs and other endocrine disruptors. The stuff that doesn’t biodegrade does this:
and it creates a plastic island the size of texas.
A recent article in Audubon magazine, along with a growing awareness of my own chemical sensitivities and the fact that I have an infant to protect, has pushed me over the border into a small but growing number of socially awkward plastic-less crusaders. What does this mean for our family?
It begins with looking at which plastics are the most harmful. If you go by the impact on our life giving waters, that would include… all of them. Immediately, it means things like the plastic wrap on our raw, hormone free goat cheese. Canned food. Plastic utensils. Styrofoam (duh). Anything (ANYTHING) vinyl. Does it smell like a beach ball and give you that happy childhood memory? Sorry, it’s in the top list of reallyreallyreally bad.
I will keep you updated with how we progress with this. For now, we will no longer be buying food that comes in plastic (never, never microwave your food in plastic). Unless we absolutely-will-die-without-it, if it’s plastic, we aren’t buying it. Obviously we have not, and do not want, to give Fern plastic toys. and we will be saying bye bye to things like“Have’a Corn Chips” (*heavy sigh*). It means that it just really isn’t enough anymore to reduce, reuse, recycle. When it comes to plastic, it just needs to be a no-go. It also means that I do fun things like make re-usable cloth bags out of scrap material for vegetables and buying in bulk.
This is a relatively short, informative and even humorous TED talk on plastics and the Great Pacific Plastic Island.
More info:
Are you one of those Portland phoneys who drives a big ass SUV but shops at 4-Seasons market? I bet you are. I just know you are. Don’t buy plastic? You moron, it’s called RECYCLING. Americans have been doing it since the 80′s. Stop being such a pretentious prick and get a clue. Did you know that your COMPUTER is made of PLASTICS! OMG! BURN IT!
PS. My wife thinks you’re an idiot too.
hi marcus, something that i said certainly seems to have hit a nerve, although i’m not sure why. you’ve chosen to read my blog and you’re also free to live your life however you want. while i am always open to conversation and discussing differing views, i don’t appreciate being called names and am not feeling terribly open to having a conversation with you.
that said, the issue re: plastics is wide and deep. everyone should recycle, but when it comes to plastic, recycling just isn’t enough. plastic, regardless of whether it gets recycled and turned into something else, will always end up in the trash and back in the landfill. plastic is also so prolific that despite options for recycling, many people don’t…this is how the plastic “islands” in the ocean came to be. this article: http://www.grrn.org/resources/terrain.html lays out the issue clearly.
Marcus, I think your comment is exceedingly rude and obnoxious. Are you entitled to your opinion? Sure you are…and you don’t even have to agree with the comments above, but your rudeness and name calling is uncalled for.
The fact is that society today doesn’t keep anything. All you see are heaps of trash everywhere and where do cities dump there trash? In landfills or the ocean where it won’t “bother” anyone. We, as a society, do not consider the long-term effect of our life style any longer (if we ever did). Every time we create a “convenient” throw-away item–whether a bottle or mop refills–we contribute to this mess.
As the documentary stated, there are plastics that are recyclable and plastics that are not…and there are alternatives to most plastics–it just requires thought and commitment on our part. Even though it may not be entirely possible to get away from pastics, there are a number of us who make an effort to reduce the amount of plastic we use or even the amount of waste we produce, plastic or not. Recycling hasn’t seemed to make much of a dent in anything, IF people recycle at all…so many don’t. A better idea is to reuse as much as possible and not create the garbage in the first place, i.e., glass bottles for water and other beverages or cloth bags that can be cleaned and reused.
Mary, I love the idea of sewing cloth bags for bulk items. Thanks for the tip.