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What if you were told you were only allowed to generate five pounds of plastic trash this year? And what if that five pounds had to include both your recyclable AND non-recyclable plastic? Could you do it? How would you live?
According to reports from the Environmental Protection Agency (PDF) and the California Integrated Waste Management Board (PDF), the average American generates between 88 and 128 pounds of plastic trash (before recycling) per year.
Think about all the plastic most of us go through on a daily basis: grocery bags, produce bags, bottles, food wrappers, shipping packaging (including the plastic tape on the box), personal care containers such as soaps, shampoos, and lotions, take-out containers and utensils, disposable cups and straws, and all the other throw-away plastic our lives. In this day and age, could anyone eliminate so much plastic?
Last year, I did just that.
My plastic waste came in at 3.7 pounds in 2009, less than 4% of the national average. Here’s a video I made this weekend showing not only my plastic waste but also some solutions for reducing our plastic consumption. (Please disregard how many times I say, “No way” or “No Way, man.” I’m turning into my father who repeats himself all the time.)
Reasons
But why would I do this? For the fame and money? Ha! No way, man.
In June of 2007, I read the article and saw the photo that would change my life. The article was “Plastic Ocean” in Best Life Magazine, and the photo was of a dead albatross chick, its belly full of plastic pieces. I was stunned that my personal actions could impact a creature I hadn’t even known existed.
Then and there, I decided to make a change. I would collect each piece of plastic I used up and would set up a blog (fakeplasticfish.com) to keep track of it. As I discovered new alternatives to plastic, I would report them on the blog. At first, I did it only for myself and the handful of family and friends that I spammed with my updates. But soon my audience grew to include other like-minded people. Strangers who were trying to lessen their own plastic impact. A blogger was born.
Harm from Plastic
As I researched the topic, I learned more about the harm from plastics in our environment and in our own bodies.
1) Oil: Most plastic is derived from petroleum, a non-renewable resource and terribly polluting industry. In the next few years, if we don’t find alternatives to oil voluntarily, we’ll be forced to do so. In the meantime, the U.S. has 2% of the world’s oil reserves, yet uses 25%. For this reason, wars are waged for this diminishing resource.
2) Nurdles: Before becoming plastic products that we can use, the petroleum is made into tiny raw plastic pellets, called “nurdles.” These tiny nurdles are shipped in containers all over the world plastics factories. But before they reach their destination, many of these nurdles are littered in transit, where they are fatally swallowed by birds and fish. Moreover, the nurdles are accumulators of hydrophobic pollutants – things like DDE and PCB. These can be up to one million times more concentrated on the surface of these pellets than they are in the ambient sea water, according to a recent Japanese study. In short, these plastic pellets not only kill the birds and fish that eat them, they are also a source of poisons in our food chain.
3) Toxic Chemicals: The nurdles are melted down and formed into all kinds of products for us to use, many of which contain harmful additives which can leach from the plastic. One example is PVC (polyvinyl chloride, #3 plastic), used for cling wrap and other food containers as well as flooring, window blinds and even children’s toys. PVC may contain lead and phthalates, chemicals which disrupt hormones and are linked to cancer. Another harmful plastic, polycarbonate
