After having made the commitment to myself never to buy another yogurt tub, I started looking around the house to see what other sources of plastic I could eliminate. Plastic bags... yes, especially the ones from the grocery store’s produce department. Maybe I could find smaller, reusable bags specifically for produce. Plastic water bottles... I had a refillable aluminum bottle, but I never remembered to use it. Cooking oil, peanut butter, and mustard were all in plastic bottles and jars, so I must make sure future purchases of those items come in glass. Similarly, the cream for my morning coffee was in a plastic bottle, when I could easily have chosen it in a paper carton. In my liquor cabinet I had Meyer’s rum in a plastic bottle. I’d heard somewhere that plastic from bottles can leach into the food they contain. What effect does alcohol have on this rate? Or any of the other items that were packaged in plastic? I’ll never buy anything in a plastic bottle again!
What I was actually doing was unconsciously following an item on one of those itineraries for a plastic-free household that I mentioned in an earlier blog. This is to look around your home and take an inventory of which products you personally use. Check primarily your kitchen and bathroom. Then look for plastic-free alternatives. By making such an inventory, I found I was able to find more changes I could make and develop the habits I needed to make these changes stick. Here is a partial list of the specific challenges I had. I’ve found alternatives to the ones marked with a double asterisk, a single asterisk means I’m working on it, and no asterisk indicates that I’m still looking for a solution!
● Plastic liners in kitchen trash**
● Buying chicken and meat*
● Freezing chicken and meat**
● Buying bread
● Buying items in plastic clamshells*
● Buying ready-made salads**
● Using pens
● Buying sliced cheese and deli meats
● Buying prescription medicines
● Washing dishes**
● Storing food using plastic wrap**
I hope that anyone who is reading this will send me either copies of your single-use plastic challenges, or ideas of how I might find non-plastic solutions to the un-asterisked items on the above list.
In future posts, I plan to discuss at length the solutions I’ve found to the items above that I’ve marked with a double asterisk. Another way you can monitor your personal use of plastic is this: for a period of time, maybe a month, as you use items packed in plastic, instead of throwing the packaging out or putting it in the recycling bin, clean it and store it all somewhere. (If you plan to recycle it, you can do so later.) From your discards, you can see what you use and try to find plastic-free alternatives. I’m actually doing this myself, and I will give a complete report on my results next month.
So far, it’s been quite an eye-opener to see how much and what type of plastic waste my household produces. Indeed, I’m ashamed to say that as I was looking through my plastic garbage, I discovered that another item I use every day is packed in a plasticized bag. I’ve always just tossed such bags away without thinking that they were composed of plastic. For some reason, probably because the use is so automatic and essential to my daily well-being, it never occurred to me that I needed to look for an alternative. Now, quite reluctantly, I have to add it, un-asterisked, to the above list: ● Coffee
I hope you will also try this; save your plastic trash for a week, 2 weeks or a month, sort through it to see what you use, photograph it, and send it to me. Next month I plan to write about simple ways to choose products thoughtfully so that you can find plastic-free alternatives. Maybe you’ll find some of these tips useful. Then, save your plastic trash again and see if the pile is smaller. I’m sure that you, as was I, will feel shocked and a bit discouraged at how much plastic we unthinkingly throw away each day. Most of us don’t want to use so much of it. But our way of living has become so dependent on what is available to us that it appears we have no choice. It’s as if we’ve been fed so much plastic that we’ve all developed an addiction to it, and if we stop cold turkey, we might find that we simply can’t do without the convenience plastic packaging provides to our daily lives and that we’ll relapse into our old habits. However, there are some choices we can make if we are willing.
Taking baby steps of eliminating one source of plastic and then seeing what else can be done makes it more likely that these new, plastic-free behaviors will take hold. It has already made an impact on me and my family. However, there are some changes we can demand that our government and private businesses make. The Surfrider Foundation acts as a megaphone for our voices to demand these changes. Surfrider was there just last January to lobby for SB 6005, the ReWrap Bill, requiring businesses to be more responsible for the packaging of their products, and HB 2144, the Bottle Bill, providing for bottle deposits. Unfortunately neither of these bills passed out of the Washington State House. Maybe if we get a few more voices behind that megaphone, next time we’ll be able to make important legislation like this happen.