After all of these years of being what I thought was a conscious consumer I admittedly have not been conscious enough. Yes, I carry my cloth bags, buy in bulk and have certainly become more aware in my purchases.
Plastic is something that I have attempted to limit in our lives for many years. I would purchase wood or cloth toys for the kids, buy things that were in paper rather than plastic when it was readily available and ditched plastic within my living space. I didn’t like the vibration that plastics emitted. I was attracted to natural fibers and all things natural.
However, over the past few years for a variety of reasons I have allowed plastic to creep back in our lives. Living in certain places the natural choices have not been as readily available, I forget the cloth bags being a busy Mama or the ultimate excuse plastic is cheaper! But at what cost in the long term?
Well, over the past couple months this has been on my consciousness. Maybe it has been the walks along the beach and seeing all the odd plastic remains. Shoes, plastic oil bottles, deoderant containers, hairbrushes, toothbrushes and a variety of other weird things that have helped me realize that there is way too much plastic in this world. Or maybe it was reading some facts recently in a community newsletter that stated “all the plastic you ever consumed is still on this earth.” Could also be that plastic is linked to many health issues, some of which are touching me.
Several days my toddler son and I would go walking together and he had this excellent idea of picking up the garbage we saw on the shore. I thought this is so great that he is doing this and what a little environmentalist he is! Then one day I had a realization. Isn’t this all going to end up back here or on another shore at some point? Oh, I get it! We like to pick up garbage and send it to the landfill because it is out of sight out of mind perhaps.
What if we just took all the garbage, especially plastic and just dumped it in front of our homes and see what we are really consuming? How long is it taking all of this stuff to decompose? Better yet DOES it breakdown and what happens to the environment or our well being? Somehow sending it to the dump makes it okay in our consciousness. We do not have to think about it.
Plastics are having an impact on our health, hormones, and well being. They are having an impact on Mother Earth’s health, hormones and well being. So, what can we do to make a difference?
Today I am making a challenge to myself and anyone else who chooses to become a part. The Freedom From Plastic Challenge begins with you and I. I am committing to becoming a more conscious consumer and will be choosing things that do not contain plastic as much as possible. This takes some awareness especially with children involved. I would like to say I will never buy plastic again. However, I also realize this may not be the reality for today’s modern lifestyle. Just becoming more conscious and limiting the plastic consumption can have a huge impact. After looking around it is apparent in some areas this is definitely a challenge.
Here are a few guidelines to follow:
- When making a purchase I will opt for only those choices that are free from plastic as much as possible. This includes packaging of a product. If I can live without or there are alternatives those will be my choices.
- I will continue to reuse the plastic that is here for this transition time in a balanced way. (ex. using containers for planting or composting scaps etc.)
- I will contact companies that are using plastic packaging for items that are my preference. I will ask them to consider eco conscious,plastic free choices.
I will keep you posted with my insights, more facts. As always I welcome your comments or tips. I would love to hear your experiences with the challenge.
Here are some plastic facts that might prompt you to become a part of the
Freedom From Plastic Challenge.
- When buried, some plastic material may last for 700 years. (Manufacturers add inhibitors that resist the decomposition process necessary to break down the plastic.)
- Over 46,000 pieces of plastic debris float on every square mile of ocean.
- Although polystyrene foam (commonly known as Styrofoam) is completely non-biodegradable, it is recyclable. If you lined up all the polystyrene foam cups made in just one day, they would circle the earth.
- According to Dr. Miligram, a plastics analyst, “Recycling plastics saves twice as much energy as burning them.”
- Americans use 4 million plastic bottles every hour!-Yet only 1 bottle out of 4 is recycled.
- Americans make enough low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plastic every year to shrink-wrap the state of Texas. Most of it ends up in landfills.
- Plastics are part of the waste stream: although they account for only 8% of the waste by weight, they occupy about 20% of the volume in a landfill due to their low bulk density.
- In 1988 we used 2 billion pounds of HDPE just to make bottles for household products. That’s about the weight of 900,000 Honda Civics.
- Since the introduction of PET containers in the late 1970’s, the industry has reduced the weight of PET in 2-liter bottles from 67 grams on average to about 48 grams; a 28% reduction.
- It takes 5 recycled two-liter bottles to make enough fiberfill for one ski jacket.
- It takes 1,050 recycled milk jugs to make a 6-foot plastic park bench.
- About nine billion plastic bottles are produced annually in the U.S. about two-thirds of which end up in landfills or incinerators.
- Recycling a single plastic bottle can conserve enough energy to light a 60W bulb for up to 6 hours.
- 9.1 billion plastic bottles were disposed of in 2002 with only 360 million of them being recycled.
- In Britain we use about 275,000 tonnes of plastic bottles in our homes every year- that’s about 15 million bottles every day.
- It takes about 450 years just for one plastic bottle to break down in the ground!
- An average 323 plastic bags are taken into our homes every year and it takes 500 years to decay when sent to landfill.
- It takes about 25 recycled plastic drinks bottles to make one fleece jacket.
- Only 2.5% of plastic bottles are presently recycled in Europe.
- Plastic bags are made of polyethylene
- Polyethylene is a petroleum product
- Production contributes to air pollution and energy consumption
- Four to five trillion plastic bags are manufactured each year
- Americans throw away approximately 100 billion polyethylene bags per year
- Of those 100 trillion plastic bags, 1% are recycled
- It takes 1000 years for polyethylene bags to break down
- As polyethylene breaks down, toxic substances leach into the soil and enter the food chain
- Approximately 1 billion seabirds and mammals die per year by ingesting plastic bags
- Plastic bags are often mistaken as food by marine mammals. 100,000 marine mammals die yearly by eating plastic bags. These animals suffer a painful death, the plastic wraps around their intestines or they choke to death.
