Before even sitting down for breakfast today, I had touched at least ten pieces of plastic.
My shampoo and conditioner bottles are both made of plastic; I squeezed out some toothpaste from a plastic Crest tube; I pumped some lotion into my hands from a giant container of Eucerin, and you guessed it, that was plastic.
In the past few weeks and months, I’ve started to notice how populated my apartment is with this seemingly harmless, even ingenious material. It’s not just in the bathroom (where even my plastic deodorant lives beside my plastic Sonicare toothbrush, where my plastic pink cylinder of mascara stands next to an amber-colored bottle of medication that is, yes, also plastic)–it’s in the kitchen, too.
Every block of cheese in my fridge is packed in a thin seal of the stuff. My bottle of yogurt stands proud in its plastic shell. My deli-sliced turkey is airtight in its plastic bag. This is just in the refrigerator. Think about the nested take-out containers, the food storage lids, the plastic baggies, all hidden in shelves. There are the caps to my spices and the knobs on my stove. There’s the head of the spatula and the handle of the whisk. It boggles the mind when you start to consider that our world runs on plastic. It houses most of the products we use to make ourselves beautiful. It turns on our switches and keeps our food fresh. It manages all of its jobs remarkably well. But a little too well, it turns out.
Plastic doesn’t really go away.
About ten years ago, I first heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I remember hearing the term and then immediately doing a Google search. The images I saw were disorienting. How could I have not heard about something that, at the time, was estimated to be about the size of Texas floating in our world’s largest ocean?
I saw clear plastic bags drifting in the midst of schools of yellow fish. I saw bottle caps lodged in the stomachs of dead, decomposing seabirds. The pictures more than startled me–they obsessed me. So I started to research this “patch,” and I quickly learned that most of the garbage floating out there and sinking to the depths is made of plastic that does not decompose. It breaks into smaller and smaller particles, but this inorganic material is infiltrating the ocean food chain. It’s not just unsightly; it’s toxic.
In classes that I teach on writing research papers, I show my students pictures of the Pacific Garbage Patch, and tell them a little about its genesis. It’s always surprising to me to see how few hands go up in the air when I ask if they’ve heard about this garbage patch. The number of hands has been increasing year by year, but still many of my students, like me a decade ago, have no idea how clogged our oceans and seas and lakes are becoming with trash, especially of the plastic variety.
So, this experiment, and this blog that will follow it, has been brewing in my mind for several years. Finally in April of this year, I’ve decided to try and put my “money” where my mouth is, and give up as much plastic as I can for a full year. I know it’s going to be hard. I know I’m going to encounter plastic when I least expect it, because I already do. But for 365 days, I’m going to see just how much I’m able to replace plastics with materials that are more Earth-friendly, including plastic that can be recycled, attempting to break my crazy addiction to this stuff.
My official journey will begin this Wednesday, April 22nd in honor of Earth Day. I hope you’ll join me this year to see how well I succeed at “dumping plastic.”
dumping plastic 
Hold on to your butts!
So proud of you for turning your concern into action, and excited (terrified) to join you on this journey!
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I’m going to need you to keep me honest! 🙂 thanks for all your support, Bud.
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Bravo, Meredith! Your blog inspires me to give up plastic as well. Dad and I already do a good job of recycling plastic containers and receptacles. We also save our plastic bags and return them to the grocery store, but we also bring our own cloth bags to the store when shopping. What are other ways that you will “give up plastic” this year? I’d love to hear your ideas about reducing the horrific Pacific Garbage Patch? Best of luck!
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Mom, so glad you and Dad already do so much to reuse plastic and to recycle! Those are some of the things I’m going to try and be really good about doing (especially using cloth bags, etc.). I’m also going to try and find new products such as shampoo, deodorant, laundry detergent, etc. that come in biodegradable containers or in plastics that are more earth-friendly. I’d love to hear your tips as I go through this adventure, and thanks for all of your support!
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Way to go!
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Thank you, Kristin!
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Meredith,
So proud of what I see here! Love the fact that you reference the Patch with your writers. For many years, this has been a motivational factor for me in my teaching–raising environmental awareness of my students. I believe that I can make a positive impact in terms of the environment when referencing it and using different methods of teaching which encourage critical thinking (a main tenet of environmental education). Anyhow, as one of my favorite professors from college would say, “believe in lost causes”.
As for your poem on Canary, very cool. Love this passage, its “terrible beauty”:
new recruits bob
and twist, gleaming against
the moon’s light like clear,
unclosable eyes.
As Pope John Paul II says in his letter to artists, beauty is the visible form of the good and it is the beauty which artists pass on to generations which will “stir them to wonder! Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude.”
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Lary, what gorgeous words. Thank you for sharing these messages of inspiration and encouragement. I especially love “believe in lost causes.” After a visit to Walgreens this morning (where is seems plastic itself is for sale), I needed a reminder that all is not lost, so your message really boosted my resolve. I would love to hear some of the ways you raise environmental awareness for your students…any particular texts you’d recommend? Thanks again for this inspiring message.
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Meredith,
Here’s a link to a great group that promotes environmental education.
http://www.caee.org/what-environmental-education
Take Care!
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This looks like an awesome organization, Lary! Thanks for sharing the link. Looks like they have some really creative professional development for teachers–I’ll look into this. Thanks again for this resource and your encouraging words!
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