My name is Renee Koval-Huenuqueo. I am the Rise Above Plastics (RAP) Coordinator for the Gray’s Harbor Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. I was born, raised, educated, I worked, raised a family and retired here, in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve long been worried about the welfare of our planet, and I am happy to have found the Surfrider Foundation which provides a way I can participate in taking care of our environment.
When I set out on my journey to a plastic free life, I did what all travellers do... I went shopping! I searched the internet for websites where I could find reusable alternatives to single-use plastic items. I started at TruEarth.com for laundry strips, and found other products such as solid cubes of dishwasher detergent packaged in cardboard envelopes. I browsed through LifeWithoutPlastic.com for metal straws and cotton produce bags. At ZeroWasteOutlet.com, I put shampoo and hair conditioner bars in my cart. On that site I noticed that toothbrushes made from bamboo were offered as an alternative to plastic. I paused, looking at the bamboo toothbrushes and thought to myself, “Well, this might be going to a bit of an extreme. I replace my toothbrushes only once a year, and then I reuse the old one for cleaning. I don’t think my plastic toothbrush is leaving that much of a plastic footprint." I ended my spending spree there. The next day I took part in a pleasure that most of us who live out here at the coast enjoy; I set out to take a nice walk along the beach. I brought along a bucket to pick up any trash I might come across. You see, once I became more sensitive to the problems caused by plastic litter, it's hard for me to not see it and I feel an urgency to pick it up.
On that very day, the first thing my eyes fell upon, and I kid you not, was a littered plastic toothbrush! I stood there for a couple minutes, looking at the thing, wondering what the universe was trying to tell me. Then I considered that if whoever had discarded that toothbrush had bought a bamboo one instead, it wouldn’t be sitting there on that beach sloughing off nano-plastics that some unwitting fish, seabird or razor clam might mistake for food. Yes indeed, a simple toothbrush can leave a footprint. I decided then and there that I would replace my plastic toothbrush with a bamboo one.
And it was easy to find. I saw one the next time I was in the Market Place in Aberdeen. When I got home with my new bamboo toothbrush, I put it in a ceramic jar next to a tube of toothpaste. Looking at that tube, I thought that maybe I should try out the toothpaste tablets that come in paper packaging. But chewing tablets to make toothpaste? No, that didn’t appeal to me at all. It wasn’t until I’d finished an experiment; one I’d suggested in a previous blog, when I realized that it was time for me to give the tablets a try. The aforementioned experiment consists of saving all single-use plastic you go through in a month’s time rather than putting it in the garbage or recycle bin. The objective of that experiment is to see how much and what kind of plastic you personally go through and decide which items you can replace with non-plastic alternatives. My pile of plastic included, of course, a squeezed out tube of toothpaste. I knew I could get the toothpaste tablets online, but while shopping at Organics 101 in Montesano, I found some offered for sale, so I added them to my basket. When I tried them out, I discovered that they weren’t bad at all. Biting into them was like biting into an Altoid and the foam worked up quickly, exactly like what one gets from the paste that comes from a tube. Since then, I’ve tried another, less costly brand that I found online, but those tablets weren’t as nice as the ones I bought in Montesano.
I don’t want to end this without mentioning another little thing: Plastic straws seem to have reappeared as an issue. Sure, one straw may seem to be a small thing, but they show up on our beaches as litter often enough that they have their own listing when we categorize what we pick up. When you think about it, how often do we actually need to use straws? For the handful of occasions when we do, reusable metal or glass ones are readily available, and easy to stash in a carry all to have available. Do you know that Washington State currently has a ban on plastic straws? When you go to a restaurant, drinks are not supposed to be served with a straw unless you request one. Isn’t it better for the environment, and also for the pocketbook, not to automatically put a straw in a glass?
Sometimes it’s the little things that might seem insignificant that add up. 3.5 billion toothbrushes and 20 billion tubes of toothpaste that are sold each year don’t disappear after we’ve put them in the trash. And do you want to guess how many plastic straws end up in the garbage? (500 million straws each day!) We all know that these items don’t decompose, they remain in our environment for hundreds of years, many to be washed up onto our beaches either in recognizable forms or as micro-and nano-plastics. When all of these items are added up, you realize that the footprint it leaves on our earth is bigger than you might be comfortable with.