War on Garbage: The personal is political

Image copyright
cesarharada.com
Creative Commons license

We're in the kitchen, three of us. He's fixing a sandwich to gobble on his way upstairs to an important phone call.

She's fixing snacks for the little ones before we rush out the door to pick up the oldest.

I'm fixing to ride along and catch a train.

Bustling and bubbling with news, ideas, catch-up, there's no time to sit down and get to the heart of things. We're jabbering on the fly. The topic is plastics. Conversation goes something like this.

He: "I think you're wasting a lot of energy eliminating plastics from your life when the problem is so much bigger."

She: "Yes. The problem is bigger than you. Why don't you work on changing how plastics are recycled? Make it easier for all of us to recycle all our plastics? That would have a bigger impact."

Me: "Yes, recycling is critical, but it's a stop-gap, not the solution. Polymers are getting into us, into the kids. I have to do what I can to limit their exposure, our exposure. And what about all those poor sea creatures swallowing so much plastic they suffocate and die? (Call me a bleeding heart.) No matter how much I recycle, I can't be sure some of my plastic crap won't end up choking a giant sea turtle, or floating in the great Pacific gyre."


Not exactly a 30-second elevator speech

Boy, do I wish I had already perfected my thirty-second elevator Why-I'm-Pitching-Plastic speech. It would go something like this.

Giving up plastics is something like giving up cigarettes. Many of us stopped smoking a long time ago. We didn't want a slow, suffocating death. A lot of the PCBs, BPAs and phthalates circulating in our bodies, in our children's bodies, in every mother's breast milk, will never leave us. No one knows what slow, agonizing deaths we may be generating. There are pointers, but too few studies tell us anything for sure. Why take the chance? We need to stop ingesting them. To do that, we need to stop bringing them into our environment.

It makes no difference whether we're manufacturing or re-manufacturing plastic, we're putting toxic polymers and their relatives into the atmosphere, into the water, into the ground, and yes, into our bodies.

Of course, that's not the whole story. Plastic is made from fossil fuels and, it bears repeating, very difficult to recycle. Sure we can make it from corn and soybeans. On a planet of 6.8 billion people (more than double the 1959 total of 3 billion), and expected to increase to 9 billion before mid-century, which is more important: crops for food, or crops for plastic and profit?

I get that plastic is endemic. I get that I can't escape it. Shoot, I'm having a heck of a time simply slowing down my use of plastics, let alone eliminating them. Still. I absolutely have to take responsibility for my part of the problem.

So I'm doing something about it, personally and politically. When I slow the flow of plastic items into our home, when I choose plastic-free alternatives, I vote.


S-u-p-p-o-r-t

(To the tune of D-i-v-o-r-c-e)

One vote doesn't make much difference, but it is part of my personal goal to live consciously, and by writing about it here, I lend support to all the others reducing their plastic consumption. As more and more of us talk about what we're doing, we learn how many others are voting with their dollars, how many are writing letters to manufacturers, city officials, legislators and senators asking for change.

We connect. We learn from each other. We discover we're not alone, we're not an insignificant voice, and we are growing in numbers.


Worth my time, how about yours?

We have to stop bringing so much plastic into our environment, our homes and our bodies.

That's why reducing the plastic in my life is worth my energy, worth my time and is a political act. Yes, I will continue to work toward better and better recycling options, but what I do--or not--with plastics every single day counts.

What you do counts, too. It's our collective actions and choices that got us into this mess. We are the ones who can get us out. There's no denying plastic raises a lot of tough issues. What do you think are the best ways to solve the problem? Do you (will you) vote with your dollars and demand plastic-free alternatives wherever possible?

The more we vote with our dollars on the plastic issue, the sooner viable solutions will become profitable and real, and the closer we get to a world a whole lot more like the Village of Ordinary.

__

We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.