Pollution

In my August blog post about abstaining from plastic, I referenced a site describing the detrimental effects of plastics in our oceans and briefly mentioned the “garbage patch” in the North Pacific Gyre. Many people allude to this large concentration of plastic waste when appealing to the public to ban plastic bags or increase plastic recycling programs. Recently, there has been some debate about the actual size of the plastic waste expanse in the North Pacific Gyre.

Four years ago, Worldwatch in their wonderful but now defunct magazine, published a few interesting numbers. In the mid-1990s there were 385 bicycles per 1000 Americans (US), the number in Germany was 588 per 1000 Germans and in Holland .... 1000 bikes per 1000 Dutch people of course! Bicycles in Europe are considered a transport vehicle just like a car and are treated as such unlike in most of the continental US.

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.