My week without plastic

I found that I was getting depressed every day when I took a piece of bread out of a bag to make French toast, open a pill container to take my allergy medicine, or peeled back the wrapper from a block of cheese to make an omelette, so I took a vow not to buy any new plastic for one week. Plastics aren't just in grocery bags, which I can avoid most of the time. They're in food wrappers, diapers, hair care, appliances, toys, computers, writing utensils, art supplies, pet supplies, eyeglasses, business envelopes, you name it. No matter how much I try to recycle, it still overwhelms me to observe how much plastic is in my life, and how much still gets thrown away.

What's so bad about plastic? It takes a long time for it to decompose in the ground, so it just builds up without contributing any energy back into the cycle of life on this planet. Since it's only been in use about 50 years, no one really knows how long it takes to decompose. Some say 10 years to 1,000 years, depending on the hardness and chemical composition of the plastic. In the ocean, however, it decomposes very quickly, giving off harmful chemicals that at the very least cause problems with animal reproductive systems and at the most cause cancer. In Japan alone, I've read that 150,000 tons of plastic a year washes up on the shore.  This isn't a nice thing to do to the planet.

My vow was to go one week without purchasing any new plastic. No wrappers, no containers, no bottles, no computer parts, no bags. The first day, of course, one wouldn't expect to be too hard, but, it did have its inconveniences. Between the hour of 9:41 and 11:30, I was very hungry at work and couldn’t find anything at the nearby café that wasn’t wrapped in plastic. The only other inconvenience this first day was that I couldn't buy a printer cartridge to print registration forms for my daughter's classes she wants to take in the Fall.

It was really easy not to buy plastic, if I didn't go to the store. Staying at home, eating from my garden, doing my chores, it felt like a piece of cake, but whenever we had to go to the store, it became an issue of trying to find what people wanted not wrapped in plastic or simply go without. We ran into issues with printing forms and scripts, but we solved those by going to Staples and paying them to print our papers. I inadvertently ran my cell phone through the washing machine, but it worked right afterward, so we avoided replacing that too.   

Throughout this experiment, I researched the effects of plastic on the world. I read several articles about the plastic garbage dumps collecting in the ocean, and that certainly gave me the willpower. Check out Pacific Plastic Waste Dump for more information about the massive collections of plastic in slow-moving ocean gyres. Another article I read on Discovery network said that a scientist has estimated that there are at least 315 billion pounds of plastic in the ocean right now.

My week without plastic generated some interesting discussion among my blog readers. During my plastic “fast,” I was getting emails with ideas for overcoming my plastic challenges.  The week after, I got the question: "Now what?" What can we do to change this? How can we keep from putting plastic in our waterways? How is my behavior as one person going to change anything?” Answer: it won't. My biggest observation while abstaining from plastic is the mindlessness with which other people buy it, use it, and throw it away. The only way to stop them from doing that is to make it illegal. I've just read that Ikea stopped using plastic bags and went to only reusable bags due to a 92% vote from customers.

That week, I contacted all of the elected officials of Corvallis and Albany, Benton County and Linn County and Governor Kulongoski to discuss the possibility of a plastic bag ordinance in stores in our community. Oregon was trying last year to be the first state to ban plastic bags in stores and pharmacies. They didn't get the bill together in time. Portland is trying to make its own ban in the meantime. The city of San Francisco has banned single use plastic bags in all stores, and has switched to corn-based plastics for produce bags.

The discussion about a plastic bag ordinance in Corvallis, Oregon was under way. Several people from differing political backgrounds were inspired to write letters to the city manager and councilors in support of a ban on single use plastic bags in stores and pharmacies. People who wrote forwarded letters to me from their councilors with very positive responses, saying that there has been discussion of such an ordinance, but they were awaiting citizen interest. It was all very hopeful. Then, I got an email from the mayor, ensuring me that there is strong opposition to a bag ordinance and it is definitely not on the horizon. That was a big contrast to what we had heard so far. When I posted this new information on my Facebook page, many people chimed in saying they have heard positive reactions from stores about doing away with plastic bags, and several people requested a grass roots movement/organization to get a broader discussion going about the subject. So, I started a Facebook group to invite the greater community to weigh in with the pros and cons and possible solutions to the issue. Maybe after some discussion with the various interest groups and research into how other cities are implementing their bans, we can come to a rational conclusion that works for all sides. Maybe there aren't "sides," and we just need a common starting point from which to move forward.