The Crazy Woman

I’m haunted by the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as I wrote about in Drowning In Plastic: Birds, Fish and Humans. Threats posed by the swirling, 90-foot-deep dervish of plastic tonnage are not just about mankind’s health or mankind fouling earth’s mighty oceans.

Dangers posed to wildlife by plastic refuse are shocking and lethal. We’re literally drowning in our squalid trash, and drowning (and choking) our world, too.

We want to do our part, of course. Presumably like yours, my household has done a mediocre job of minimizing plastics we dump and of reducing our weekly garbage pile.

We sometimes tote reusable shopping bags to the market. When we don’t, we usually carry groceries home in paper, not plastic, bags. Our weekly farm-share service organic fruits and veggies are delivered in a recycled crate.

But far too often, our wastebaskets are crammed with food and cosmetic bottles, boxes, tubes, cartons, wrappings, utensils, and whatnot. All of our homes teem with plastic refuse from kitchens, bathrooms, medicine cabinets, even garages.

So what’s a well-intentioned household to do? I have a couple suggestions, some of them innovative.

First, shop at farmers’ markets whenever possible. If not feasible, deliberately choose grocery stores that minimize disposables. And bring your own reusable shopping bags. (Please!)

In my neighborhood, Henry’s Markets and Sprouts Markets, which are merging soon, offer many foods in bulk bins, sans packaging, although you still scoop purchases into thin plastic or brown paper bags. Some conventional supermarkets, such as Stater Brothers, have made genuinely commendable efforts to reduce packaged produce and expand use of bulk bins for candies and snacks. These options are a decent start.

I’m hoping that an intriguing new market innovation, in.gredients, plans to open a Southern California location. Expectations are helium-high for “the first package-free and zero waste grocery store in the United States” even before it debuts in Austin, Texas this fall. Briefly, you provide your own containers for everything you buy, or use their free, compostable containers. Click HERE to learn more.

Second, consciously adopt a more plastic-free lifestyle. It’s not easy, certainly. But if each and every U.S. household reduced plastic waste by merely five percent, the results would be revolutionary.

Take plastic wrap and plastic sandwich and food bags. Can you instead use permanent containers? Or toys and games for your kids or grandkids. Can you buy wooden rather than plastic? Can you buy leather rather than plastic balls? Better yet, can you entice them outdoors with gleaming new bikes rather more plastic junk destined to break?

Beth Terry of Oakland, California is my personal hero because of her quest since 2007 to live a plastic-free life, which she cheerfully blogs at MyPlasticFreeLife.com. ” I looked at my own life and realized that through my unconscious overconsumption, I was personally contributing the the suffering of creatures I hadn’t even known existed,” writes Ms. Terry.

Since she began her personal no-plastics crusade, she’s eliminated 2,054 plastic objects from her home. While few of us have stamina or persistence of Beth Terry’s caliber, we can all gain some terrific new plastic-freeing ideas from her journey. Here are a few:

• Glass straws rather than plastic
• Gauze rather than plastic band-aids
• Metal safety razors rather plastic throw-away razors
• Crocheted headphone covers rather than plastic foam covers
• Plastic-free school and office supplies made of recycled materials

Here’s what I find sweetly odd about Beth Terry’s plastic-free suggestions: she’s advocating the pre-plastics lifestyle my grandparents lived in the 1930s and 1940s. Gauze for bandages, metal razors, glass containers, paper folders, pretty crocheted goods. Nothing new under the sun, I guess. Solomon was right…

Third, live with less. Less house. Less car. A lot less stuff. You’ll save money. You’ll save time and aggravation. And you’ll use a heck of a lot less plastic.

Sunset magazine recently featured a story about the four-person Johnson family of Mill Valley, California who maintain a “zero waste” home. “How does a family manage to produce only two handfuls of trash per year?” asked Sunset. My honest answer: I have no earthly idea.

They look like nice people, these Johnsons. Not holier-than-thou recycling types. Look like they’d be pleasant neighbors. But Ron and I couldn’t live the stripped-down, no-frills lifestyle that is their wont.

The Johnsons have an interesting story, though, that provides teachable moments for us. Reports Sunset:

“Garbage… is something that happens rarely in this modern, minimalistically decorated house. That’s by day-to-day intention—to live simpler and lighter on the planet. Their quest started three years ago when Béa and husband Scott downsized from a 3,000-square-foot home to their current 1,400 square feet…

“If the boys outgrow something, it’s donated, sold, or re-gifted. Béa and Scott encourage friends and family to give gifts of expe­rience rather than things. This year, their 10-year-old’s birthday gifts included a weekend of skiing and gift certificates to a climbing gym and the local ice cream shop…

“The family uses no Q-tips, cotton balls, or tissue (handkerchiefs sub in here). Toilet paper rolls come wrapped in paper, not plastic. Books all come from the library.” Click HERE for Sunset’s 9-page slide show of “The zero-waste home.”

Despite these terrific ideas, I still feel overwhelmed by the destruction mankind has thoughtlessly wrought with garbage, especially plastics refuse. I hate that we could eventually snuff out our beautiful world, no matter the reason. But that we could hoard our world to death is humiliating for our species. Or it should be humiliating.

Please do your part to reverse the damage wrought over the past five decades by the astonishing proliferation of plastics. Minimize plastics used in your home, and reduce your weekly trash pile. Take proud responsibility for your part.

I’m haunted by the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And I feel shame that a million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles choke to death each year on human garbage found in the world’s oceans.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific Trash Vortex, was created in a naturally-occurring gyre in the North Pacific Ocean located between the U.S. and the Asian continent.

In a tranche roughly double the size of Texas and 90-feet deep, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a nightmarish whirl of millions of tons of human garbage apparently accumulated over the past 75 years. About 90% of the garbage is made of plastic and plastic pellets. The UK Telegraph describes the Patch as “not a solid mass, as is sometimes imagined, but a kind of marine soup whose main ingredient is floating plastic debris. Oceanographer Charles J. Moore, who discovered the Patch in 1997, estimates its ever-growing garbage vortex to weigh up to 100 million tons.

Commonly found garbage includes “plastic bags, balloons, buoys, rope, medical waste, glass bottles and plastic bottles, cigarette lighters, beverage cans, styrofoam, lost fishing line and nets, and various wastes from cruise ships and oil rigs are among the items commonly found to have washed ashore. Six-pack rings, in particular, are considered a poster child of the damage that garbage can do to the marine environment,” per Wikipedia.

Up to 80% of Patch garbage was originally trashed on land, while 20% was discarded directly into oceans, per a United Nations scientific group.

“Some of these long-lasting plastics end up in the stomachs of marine birds and animals, and their young… Besides the particles’ danger to wildlife, the floating debris can absorb organic pollutants from seawater, including PCBs, DDT, and PAHs…

“These toxin-containing plastic pieces are also eaten by jellyfish, which are then eaten by larger fish. Many of these fish are then consumed by humans, resulting in their ingestion of toxic chemicals,” explains Wikipedia.

Threats posed by the Great Pacific Garbage Patch are not just about mankind’s health or mankind fouling earth’s mighty oceans. Threats posed to wildlife are shocking and lethal.

Reported the UK Telegraph in Drowning in Plastic:

“Worldwide, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, plastic is killing a million seabirds a year, and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles. It kills by entanglement, most commonly in discarded synthetic fishing lines and nets.

“It kills by choking throats and gullets and clogging up digestive tracts, leading to fatal constipation. Bottle caps, pocket combs, cigarette lighters, tampon applicators, cottonbud shafts, toothbrushes, toys, syringes and plastic shopping bags are routinely found in the stomachs of dead seabirds and turtles.

“A study of fulmar carcases that washed up on North Sea coastlines found that 95 per cent had plastic in their stomachs – an average of 45 pieces per bird…

“Plastic has been found inside zooplankton and filter-feeders such as mussels and barnacles… We do know that whales are ingesting plenty of plastic along with their plankton, and that whales have high concentrations of DDT, PCBs and mercury in their flesh… A dead albatross was found recently with a piece of plastic from the 1940s in its stomach.”

I feel overwhelmed by the destruction mankind has thoughtlessly wrought with garbage, especially plastics refuse. We’re literally drowning in our trash, and drowning our world, too.

There are innovative solutions and brand-new ideas… steps, small and large… that we can all take to start responsibly doing our part to reduce plastics trash for our households. In Part Two of this article, I’ll share a few of those ideas and solutions.