Starting July 15th, I’ll be joining a group of Islanders and living a Month Less Plastic, and you are invited to join. There are many reasons you might choose to reduce the amount of new plastic coming into your home, and many ways to participate. Perhaps you’re concerned about the amount of plastic trash that finds its way into our oceans each year (4 to 8 million pieces per day, depending on who you ask). Perhaps you’re worried about the impact on you and yours because of contact between your food and plastics (Bisphenol A, for instance, is a common additive in many plastics including the epoxy liner common to canned foods). Maybe you’re looking to reduce your carbon footprint (plastic packaging in many forms allows the profitable industrial production of food and its subsequent fossil fuel-fueled distribution, to say nothing of the petroleum used to produce plastics in the first place). Maybe you just want an interesting challenge to add depth to summer vacation. Living a month less plastic can address all of these things, and more.
For the past year and a half, I’ve
been working with my friend Liesl Clark on a project we call Plastic Is Forever, started one day when Liesl and her kids went to the beach and came home changed by what they found. We have been cataloging the amount and types of plastic trash we find on local beaches and higher up in our watersheds, and using these found plastics to raise awareness about why we need to reduce our use of plastic and how to do just that. It’s true that we’ll need more than individual action to deal with the amount of plastic already in our environment, but it’s also true that each of us can directly impact the amount of plastic that finds its way down our island watersheds and into Puget Sound.
If you’re just starting to think about the many roles and impacts of petroleum plastics in the world, take this time to simply notice plastic. Just see it, look for it, every day, not just in the trash you produce or in your recycling bin, but in your home, your handbag, your car, your office and at the playgrounds, parks, and parking lots you visit.
If you’re ready to reduce the amount you use, pick your most commonly consumed single-use items and find non-plastic alternatives for these: plastic straws, for instance, or plastic to-go silverware, balloons, bottled water, yogurt tubs, and tubes. . . . What are the plastics you use for 10 minutes or less, and what can you choose instead?
If you’re in the mood to refuse plastic altogether, have at it! Look for ways to say “no” to any new plastic entering your home. It’s likely to be impossible, but it’s illuminating nonetheless. What alternatives exist when you’re determined to stay away from new plastics, and what items are just not readily available sans plastic? What can you live without, and what do you really and truly need?
Those millions of pieces of plastic that enter our oceans every day are adding up, and 80 percent of them come from land, finding their way down our watersheds to the sea. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade in the natural environment, although much of it breaks into smaller and smaller pieces. These microplastics now outnumber plankton in surveyed upper ocean waters, and scientists are uncovering the ways they enter our food webs when they are consumed by filter feeders, fish, birds, and cetaceans.
Several of us will be blogging about our Month Less Plastic. Please join us in that endeavor, too. The more we share about what’s working and what isn’t, the easier it will be for all of us to make the shift toward a life less plastic. Please visit Liesl Clark’s blog http://pioneeringthesimplelife.wordpress.com/ or my own http://rockfarmer.wordpress.com/ and let us know if we can add your blog to our Month Less Plastic list.
Need help or inspiration? Have questions about exactly how you can shop without hauling home a pile of new plastic? Please let us know and we’ll share what we’ve learned during previous plastic-free months and help brainstorm new solutions.
Photos by Alan Levine, Zainub Razvi, Kashyap Hosdurga.
