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.
One of the stops along the way of my journey to a plastic-free home was to look through the plastic I’ve disposed of these past six weeks. As I do, I see packaging, tubs and clamshells, coffee and tea-bag wrappers, meat and cauliflower wrap, bread bags and cracker liners. I can’t do much about the packaging and bottle caps from milk. It’ll be hard to find alternatives for the bread bags and cracker liners, but maybe I can find plastic-free coffee and tea and cut down on the tubs and clamshells.
But there is another thing I’m also noticing. Remember, I’ve been consciously reducing my use of plastics for about a year, since the day that I realized that all those yogurt tubs I’d thought I’d been putting into the recycling bin had actually been going into garbage. In addition to eliminating my use of those tubs, I’ve made several additional changes. I now use a refillable water bottle and I bring my own shopping bags to the grocery store with some cotton mesh bags for the produce aisle. I buy items in bulk. I store food in glass bowls or beeswax wrap. So, as Ilook again at that pile of plastic waste, I realize that there is a lot of plastic waste that I don’t see.I don't see plastic bottles or jugs, plastic wrap, ready-made salad bags, and produce bags. Although I’ve got a way to go, I feel I can pat myself on the back for the progress I’ve already made.
One of the first things I did to reduce my plastic usage was easily available. That was to choose products that come in glass bottles or jars instead of plastic ones. Of course, this is easier said than done as it requires shopping around, making lifestyle changes or paying a bit more money. For example, if you drink juice and can’t find it in a glass bottle, maybe you can give the old frozen concentrates in cardboard containers another try. Ketchup, yellow mustard, and cooking oils are usually packed in plastic bottles and not easily found in glass. “Gourmet”-type mustards and ketchups are available in glass, but may cost a bit more. While shopping at the Grocery Outlet in Aberdeen I found canola oil in glass bottles. So it takes time to shop around to see what is and isn’t available.
An important dilemma I faced had to do with my budget. One day I was in the grocery aisle at Safeway. I spent many minutes agonizing over the choice of purchasing a large bottle of olive oil that was substantially less expensive than the ones in glass bottles. In the end, I reluctantly decided to grab a smaller, glass bottle of olive oil and return to the store when there might be other choices. This is to illustrate that saying no to plastic required me to make certain decisions. I know that when I look for alternatives to my plastic-free coffee, tea and bread preferences, I’ll be faced with these same issues, of accepting that I might have to pay more for the quality I’m used to. Cleaning and personal grooming supplies are usually packaged in plastic jugs and bottles, but those products are available in alternative non-plastic packaging.
Several brands, such as Blueland, Meliora, Life Without Plastic, and Zero Waste have a variety of products available to purchase online. Watch out for the very popular laundry strips, though. I recently discovered that the ones I’d been confidently using actually contain an amount of PVA plastics in order to form that convenient strip. It’s the same PVA used to make the detergent pods. Another idea to keep in mind is to buy cleaners, such as laundry and dishwashing detergents in the old-fashioned powdered form. How many of you remember Dr. Bronner’s and 20 Mule Team Borax? Some personal supplies required that I adjust habits or preconceived ideas of what works best. Like many people, I had an aversion to washing my hair using shampoo in the form of bar soap. I decided to give it a try before disregarding it. To my surprise, I was extremely impressed! It suds up luxuriously and the fragrances transport me to another, serene sphere. (However, unscented bars are available for those who find such scents overpowering.) These are also available online or can be found in a certain soap store in Ocean Shores and at the Market Place in Aberdeen.
However, there is another product that will require me to try something out of my comfort zone. As I look at my pile of plastic trash, I see a couple plastic tubes of toothpaste. I know this is available in a tablet that is chewed to form the foam for cleaning teeth. Chewing my toothpaste doesn’t appeal to me at all but I promise I will give it a try and who knows? I might be as pleasantly surprised as I was when I tried the shampoo bar. One thing that makes it easier for me to make the difficult choices of giving up certain products or paying a little more for others is this: When I look at something in a plastic bottle, I “see” the nano-plastics and chemicals that leach from those bottles into the products we consume. Bottled water especially, has undergone several tests to discover how much plastic has leached into the water from the bottle.
A recent January 8, 2024 study from the Columbia Climate School found that there is much more plastic than earlier studies have shown. In a one-liter bottle of water, 240,000 fragments of micro-plastics and even tinier nano-plastics were found, many more than what comes out of a tap. These fragments came not only from PET plastics, of which most bottles are made, but also and, ironically, from the nylon filters that were supposed to filter out impurities. Heat encourages this leaching, so never, ever microwave food on plastic plates, and keep any plastic containers you may be using
out of the sun. I even tossed away a favorite plastic spoon that I’d been using for stirring my yogurt! And remember that such items may have undergone some exposure to heated conditions during transportation before you purchased them. Knowing that plastic fragments have been found in bottled water, I can only wonder at what effect other liquids such as juices, soft drinks or alcoholic beverages have on their plastic containers.
Additionally, agitation contributes to the sloughing off of plastic particles, so it’s not a good idea to shake such bottles. How many of you buy orange juice in a plastic bottle and shake it up before drinking? We’re discovering that these fragments of plastic have alarming effects on human health. Not all of the released toxins and plastic fragments pass through the body. These fragments are able to penetrate cell membranes, cross the placenta, and pass through the blood brain barrier. Plastic has been discovered in the brain, lungs, hearts, testes, and liver of humans, and even in the meconium of newborns. A growing number of studies are revealing links between the presence of these plastic fragments with health issues. Among these are a March 2024 study in the New England Journal of Medicine featuring a link to heart disease and stroke; a June 12, 2024 Cornell University study that linked plastics to male infertility; and an April 2024 study from the National Library of Medicine that was one of many that linked plastics to obesity.
When I started this journey, I did so with the concern over the health of our oceans and our environment. But the farther I go, the more I realize that the overproduction of plastics has a larger array of consequences, one of which threatens the physical health of all the people for whom plastics are being manufactured. Yet plastics are so ubiquitous that the challenge of choosing not to use them is a task requiring that we make lifestyle adjustments. If we truly want to see more non-plastic choices available, we need to keep our eyes and ears open to anything that might limit the production of plastic, and send our support to any such efforts. Last year’s ReWrap bill and the Bottle bill, ones that would have given some responsibility to the producers of plastics, failed in our Washington State’s house. Let’s hope that we’ll have the opportunity to see other such plastic-controlling measures made into law. Columbia Climate School Study