Monthly Archives: September 2021

Plastic Life?

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59 This is the number of plastic objects I touched in one day. It would be even more if I had counted the items, I touched more than once. Furthermore, I probably also touched a plenty of objects that I was not even aware that they were made of plastic. In Today’s world we literally sink in in plastic so that we do not even notice any more if we touch a plastic object. So, it was with me, before this self-experiment I was not even aware that so much in my life consists of plastic. But after the first hour of my self-experiment, I was shocked because I had already touched about 25 plastic items in the first hour of my day and I also realized that almost everything in my bathroom is made of plastic. At the end of the day, I realized what a huge amount of plastic I had touched in one day.

I have divided my plastic items in different categories so I can better evaluate my result:

1. Electronic devices=7 items     examples= mobile, laptop charger

2. Bathroom products=20 items     examples= shampoo, toothbrush

3. Food=8 items     examples= yogurt cup, muesli package

4. Study Supplies=10 items     examples= pens, block

5. Sport= 5 items     examples= Ball bucket, gym bag

6. Other things= 9 items     examples= Laundry bag, cleaning rag packing

After evaluating my list of plastic items, I noticed two categories in particular where I could reduce my plastic consumption the easiest and that is Bathroom products and Food. Because especially in these categories, I used a lot of disposable plastic items, which is why I collected all single-use plastic items on another day. After the experiment, I came to the conclusion that almost all the items were in the categories (as already suspected) Bathroom and Food. And I would also say the disposable plastic items I collected that day reflected my disposable plastic use well

My Disposable Plastic in one day

  And after thinking about it, I also came up with ideas on how to reduce my single-use plastic consumption. However, I also realized how difficult it is to implement some of them in the US.

One example from the Bathroom category is to use solid shampoo, shower gel and toothpaste which is packaged completely plastic free or even a bamboo toothbrush and hairbrush are good alternatives which are usually only a few dollars more expensive than the plastic ones. Another example, which unfortunately can hardly be implemented in the USA is to shop in plastic-free sections of supermarkets, especially for food, or in completely plastic-free supermarkets, which have been around for a few years in Germany. However, after research I noticed that there are hardly any such supermarkets in the USA.

Despite some ideas, it is difficult from my point of view as a student to greatly reduce his plastic use. For example, in the dining halls there is a lot of plastic used, where it is relatively difficult for me as a student to avoid the plastic there. Another problem is that the plastic products are usually easier to get and cheaper than plastic-free products. Another point which I consider problematic is the possibility of recycling, because I find there are hardly any opportunities to use recycling facilities and if you want to find some you usually have to spend a lot of time on the subject, although there are isolated recycling garbage cans on campus, but I have the feeling that it is not taken so seriously.

 

But even after the self-experiments with the shocking results for me and the many problems that I became aware of I do not feel guilty and think that you should not feel guilty too. To deal with the topic in depth is already a start and it has motivated me to reduce my plastic footprint and to go more consciously through life.

Sleeping Among Plastic

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My plastic consumption is something I am not very proud of. Before this class, I would only pay attention to things like where I bought my clothes, bringing reusable cups to places like Starbucks or the dining hall, and trying to avoid using straws. This was the extent of me being a “conscious consumer”. Ever since I began this class and started reading Beth Terry’s book Plastic-Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too, I have changed my perception of what it truly means to be conscious of my consumption. Before taking this class, every time I would bring a reusable cup to Starbucks or avoid buying from places like H&M or Forever 21 I would give myself a pat on the back however, when I have purchased my bedding, room decor, or have gotten my acrylic nails done I would feel unphased about my plastic consumption. I have since learned that although I try to avoid single-use plastics when I am shopping, multi-use plastics are truly my downfall. 

Over the past few days, I have been pretty sick which has limited me to staying in my dorm and leaving for the occasional City Bistro trip. Thus, I haven’t had the same interaction with plastic items that I normally would’ve on a healthier day. Brainstorming this post in my bed has led me to think a lot about the things around me. Looking up, I see fairy lights and tapestry which both contain plastic components. On my bedside table, there’s a lamp, diffuser, water bottle, AirPods, essential oil bottles, remote control, pill bottle, stuffed animal, and masks which all contain plastic. As I inspected my room for all of the plastic I started realizing that the majority of my room contains plastic. My “conscious consumption” that I had previously mentioned hardly even matters when comparing that to the plastic I have in my dorm. Although most of these plastic items in my room won’t be disposed of any time soon, they eventually will end up in a landfill after my college graduation or sooner. Unfortunately, after analyzing my room, this is in fact a very accurate representation of my lifestyle and plastic footprint. I have become conditioned to the consumer lifestyle where I care more about the aesthetic of my living space and less about where the things in my living space are coming from. In the photo below I have numbered out all of the items containing plastic in a corner of my dorm room.

As someone who claims to care a lot about the environment, I personally don’t do the best job following through with it. Like I mentioned before, I try to stay away from single-use plastics if I can, shop for my clothes second-hand, and avoid using plastic straws, but is that really enough? I try my best to educate myself and others around me on the little, yet still important, things we can do to help reduce our waste. Like Beth Terry has mentioned in her book “Guilt is not encouraged”. Because of this quote, I would like to remind the reader and myself that there is always room for improvement and even if we can’t personally see the difference we are making right now, it does have a larger impact than we know. 

Plastic Ties

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I don’t want to sound like someone that has no hope for the planet, but plastic is inevitable.  Plastic is everywhere, and if you look up from your computer right now and take a look around, I’m sure you will be able to spot at least 5 items of plastic.  Even your computer contains plastic in some way.
I try to be as environmentally cautious as possible, but after logging all the plastic I touch in a day, I was truly shocked. I had 74 items, mostly synthetic but reusable, luckily.  Things like Tupperware, the handle to my dorm washing machine, tv remote, and the rubber is the soles of my shoes are all items that will last for an extended period of time.  Some items just aren’t able to be reused or recycled though.  In the bag of trash I collected throughout the day there was 5 items: 2 food wrappers, a paper cup (containing a plastic lining inside), a gatorade bottle cap, and a dryer sheet. I even collected this plastic trash in a bag made out of plastic, ironic right?
Trash collected throughout my day. Food wrappers, cup, dryer sheet, gatorade cap
I think this image fairly represents how much plastic I dispose of in a single day.  This amount of trash may seem small in scale of the whole earth, but imagine if every person on the planet collected this much trash in one day, for 365 days a year throughout their whole lifetime. That’s a lot of trash.
One main thing I have learned about my lifestyle over the past few weeks is the food industry needs a revolution when it comes to packaging.  4 out of 5 things in this picture are related to food and drinks, and were simply disposed of at the end of my day on Sunday.  There was no way to recycle or reuse these items.  I wanted a snack, and had to sacrifice the planet to enjoy the food I love.

Beth Terry states “Guilt is not encouraged”, but when thinking about it, maybe guilt should be motivating.  No single person has a way to get rid of all the plastic on the planet, but you hold the power to minimize the plastic in your every day to day life.  I think being able to see my waste from just one day just laid out on my dorm room carpet quickly made me realize that I have the power to leave a lasting impact on the Earth, and whether it’s a good or bad impact is up to me. When walking into a grocery store, I will begin to examine what I buy more carefully.  More cardboard and glass; less single use plastic and packaging in general.

I am lucky to attend a college that has a big focus on sustainability and contains recycling bins at almost every corner I turn, but what about the people that don’t have access to this? One thing I think is important about wanted to make an impact is increasing the accessibility and convince of recycling.  Many people don’t have the facilities to recycle items at, and I think this is a big drawback when it comes to an individual’s efforts to reduce their plastic footprint.  How much work and far would you be willing to go to make sure one plastic water bottle ends up at a recycling plant and not your local landfill?

Rise of Plastic

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Throughout the day September 6th, 2021 I kept count of every plastic item that I touched during my normal routine. Throughout the day I came in contact with 42 items that were made of some form of synthetic plastic, although I probably touched more that I did not realize was plastic I honestly thought I would have touched a lot more than 42 items. Many times throughout the day I had to stand and contemplate whether or not an item I was holding had any form of plastic on it. 

After the initial day of collecting everything made of plastic I encountered, I began to keep every plastic item I had that was disposable. I found myself throwing anything from a straw wrapper, to a nice plastic bottle into a bag that would slowly accumulate over the course of 24 hours. Throughout that course of time I ended up using a total of 24 disposable plastic items, and initially I thought that was not a lot, but once I laid them all out to get a picture that is when it struck me. We go through plastic like it is nothing, and the fact that 24 items took up nearly half of my carpet is outstanding, we just think of it as nothing more than a passing breeze. 

Taking both days into consideration it would seem like I use a lot of plastic based items. Now I don’t believe this one day is a good representation of my lifestyle as a human being, as both days I recorded my data on I was particularly busy, so I was naturally going through a bit more resources than I normally would. Reflecting back onto these two days though, it really strikes me how much plastic that is in our lives that we don’t even realize, and as well how little of it can be disposed of sustainably.

Comparing both days of collecting, if we assume that I would have gathered around the same amount of disposable plastics on that day, then during that first initial day I would have encountered approximately 18 non-disposable plastic items. Some of these non-disposables can still be recycled, but they require more specialized facilities to process them, and sadly I do not have easy access to said facilities in order to put them back to good use. 

At the end of the day however it is important to remember what Beth Terry once said, “Guilt is not encouraged”, and from this quote we don’t need to feel bad for using plastic items in our lives. Most of us are fortunate enough to live in a country where plastic luxuries are common, and we just have naturally begun to blend these items into our normal lives; to where we think nothing of them. You can make a change in your life to try to use less plastic, but don’t feel guilty over using some, with the world that we are living in currently it is rather hard to avoid the use of plastic. Just remember to try and take a few extra steps and maybe buy that biodegradable cups, or learn to wash your own utensils in order to not need plastic utensils; any change matters no matter how small.

Wasting Away

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When we first started to write down each plastic item we have touched throughout the day, I was amazed the see how much it turned out to be. We never really put much thought into it, but plastic is all around us. I learned in class that our world has 32 million tons in landfill and still counting. I’m even typing on something made with plastic right now. Plastic has become the easiest and cheapest thing to create nowadays. But that doesn’t mean it’s not harmful to us in other ways. The way we use plastic now is crazy and since it is everywhere and not biodegradable, the plastic trash has filled up the landfills to their point where we need to do something about it sooner rather than later.

Comparing my Bag of disposable trash to my day of things I’ve touched really taught me a lot. I buy or have lots of food or drinks that just end up going into the trash when I am finished. Especially in college, I have a lot of snacks during the day because sometimes I just don’t have time to stop and have a full meal. So, bringing a bag around with me and filling it with all the disposable plastic has shown me how much just one person throws away like its nothing. But it is something. I learned through this process that we need to find better alternatives to plastic. The videos that we have watched in class really showed me that some people are trying to make an effort in finding alternatives better fit for our environment. For example, we package all of our mail away in plastic and for what. That trash gets thrown away right when it gets delivered. But one company found that there is a way to make packaging from a type of fungi that is biodegradable and is better fit to slow down the plastic pollution. In another video there was man who made a type of plastic like material out of Chitosan and Silk. That’s shrimp shells! It’s crazy to think of all the things we could use that’s better for the environment. Instead, our world goes for the easy option. The cheap option. We need to be able to start thinking more about the future and how much we are damaging our earth with not even a thought about it.

Our college does have recycle options in the dining hall, and we do use biodegradable cups. But most people don’t think and just throw it away in the landfill. This just proves my point that people are not putting effort into saving the planet. Plus, in our dorms if we want a recycle bin in our rooms we have to walk to another building and personally ask for it. Most people think of that as too much of a hassle, so they don’t end up getting one and throwing their recycling away into their trash. Personally, I think that people need to stop being lazy about recycling because in the next generation people are going to be suffering from a lot of our mistakes including our plastic footprint.

https://biobaseddelta.com/plastic-soup-2/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUu4C1KAq_o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnMXH5TqqG8

Can This Be Reused?

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After being assigned to collect every piece of “single use” plastic, I thought it would be easy to make a concise list of everything that is plastic in my day-to-day life. For the first Outside of Class Journal Entry, I was able to list about 40 non-synthetic materials that I touched throughout one Saturday, and I came prepared to talk about it in class. After sitting and listening to my classmates discuss all the items they wrote, I realized that a lot more things are plastic than I thought… From light switches to shower curtains to the fabric sewn in my chair, it seemed almost everything around me was coated in the material or was plastic itself. After coming home and recounting, the list was not about 40 items, it was a lot more than that. I was nervous to collect all my single-use plastic throughout one day, but I knew that once I could physically see it all, I would be able to decide what is necessary and what is not.

After collecting all the items, I laid them out and looked at the various materials that composed the disposable mess. Some of it was thin, some was hard and sturdy, some was soft, while others felt sharp. I came to realize that plastic has so many forms and finishes, and that you can touch something that may look like wood or metal, and it is really just plastic (both definitions).

I also noticed that most of the disposable plastic that I used throughout the day was for food purposes, like cups, storage containers, water bottles, utensils, etc. Even though a lot of the materials pictured above are compostable, they are still deemed “single use”. Because of this, cups that are in perfectly good condition get thrown away even though they definitely could be used again, and probably a third time too.

Most of the food that uses single-use containers cannot be reused again because it is often destroyed after opening. For example, the popcorn bag cannot be reused because it is covered in grease and it is broken after opening. The fruit snack bag will not serve any other purpose than being a container for fruit snacks, so why would someone want to keep that? No wonder so much plastic is thrown away… It is just SO unnecessary.

The last group of disposable plastics I looked at was medical/other. This contained ziplock bags, q-tips, bandaids, and probe covers for my plastic thermometer. These items were a mix of necessary and unnecessary items, as there are few replacements for plastic medical equipment. Items such as the ziplock bags (they are not actually ziplock brand, I am just using the name to describe them) are unnecessary because there are alternatives in place such as glass storage. These storage bags are made from plant material and are compostable, which is why I bought them. It didn’t feel right to attend a school so close to the ocean and use so much unnecessary plastic… yet here I am, overusing plastic.

This assignment was a good representation of how much plastic I use on a daily basis, because I did not plan to collect plastic the day I did this assignment. I was planning on doing it during the weekend, which would have reflected a smaller amount of plastic as I do not go out as much on the weekends. I know it is not worth it to feel guilty, because from here on I can only be better about how much plastic I use. I know that from now on, I will think about my ability to reuse “single-use” items. Next time you use a pack of cutlery or a plastic straw, think to yourself, does this really need to be thrown away or can I maybe use it one more time?

Drowning in Plastic

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Quite literally, we are drowning in plastic.  It makes up the majority of items we touch in our day-to-day life.  Plastic is in our food, our ocean, our streets, and about anywhere else you can think of.  According to the website, Future Agenda, it is said that 275 million tons of plastic waste is created each year, and between 4.8 million and 12.7 million tons of that plastic waste is intentionally dumped into our oceans.   This plastic problem is not going away anytime soon.  Saying this, I reflect on what I can do to slow the intoxication of our only livable planet down.  This brings me to our class assignment, making note of all the items of plastics touched, and reflecting on what isn’t necessary, or can be replaced in my life.

 

 

Out of my 45 items counted (although some items touched were definitely missed), some items I found to be wasteful and replaceable were:

  • Gum

Yes, only listing gum is on purpose.  After looking through my list, thinking about which items are not practical to my lifestyle, I could not find much.  Things like a tampon are pretty necessary to women.  Other items such as my leg wrap and medical tape for my torn ACL are also quite practical, and not very replaceable.  Items such as my face wash bottle and chapstick tube are replaceable in exchange for the products in glass bottles, but far to expensive for my means.

 

 

The area I think I can make a difference is informing people about the effects of things so small like drinking out of a plastic and disposable water bottle everyday, rather than a reusable one.  Things like buying reusable food containers instead of using one-use plastic baggies.  Being more aware of the plastic you are quite literally consuming is a great place to start in this battle against plastic.  A big thing I’ve also seen is spreading around the knowledge of how to recycle items that are recyclable.  As Beth Terry says, “guilt is not encouraged”.  I do not believe the way to go about solving this plastic problem is to shame people for their behaviors.  Instead, encourage people to live cleaner for the health of themselves, and for the health of our planet.

 

 

 

Handcuffs Made of Plastic

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Although I’d like to think of myself as a young, environmentally conscious, organic, Gen-Zer, today’s experiment proved me wrong. After evaluating the number of plastic items I had touched for Journal entry #1, I thought “Wow, that’s kind of a lot! And even after talking to my classmates, I didn’t even hit the tip of the iceberg of what I missed…” So that’s why today when carrying around a bag full of disposable plastic items, I was pressed on seeing the true extent of what I missed the first go around.

Well, by about 10:30 the bag was already overflowing. I was shocked but also slightly annoyed that I still had to keep adding to this bag while being forced to lug it around the rest of the day.

Things I found in the bag at the end of the day:

  • plastic bags(from convenient stores and small plastic baggies)
  • plastic cups(solo and clear)
  • plastic straws
  • food containers/wrappers
  • plastic cutlery
  • plastic plate
  • water bottles
  • cup of noodles
  • sanitary items (tampons/pads)
  • Q-tips
  • candy wrapper

There was so much more I had collected by the end of the day, but these were some I chose to highlight because I feel many college students use these on a daily basis.

While I feel I collected my own weight in plastic today, I know this is not an accurate representation of my lifestyle. I think I use more plastic than I had found while conducting my experiment. I feel as if someone were collecting all the single-use plastic I usually use on a daily basis, the findings would be quite different. This is because I feel subconsciously I was always somewhat thinking about the experiment. My total plastic footprint is definitely larger than I had originally thought and this has made me realize I need to make a more conscious effort to make choices that are more environmentally conscious.

However, this also made me realize that there are not that many viable options for college students to live that way easily. I feel there’s little access for college students to get information on recycling facilities, let alone to use them. And even though some places at the College of Charleston claim to recycle, do we really know if that’s what they are doing with it?

 

After this whole experience has ended I have learned a couple of things. I learned that 1. There is a huge problem with disposable plastic items and how frequently they are used in our world. When in reality do we really need them to be that expendable when they are not even biodegradable? 2. Being environmentally conscious of your plastic footprint got a lot harder once I go to college. Many of the things I took for granted while living at home are now things that would be far too expensive and just simply not viable. Also, the outreach for college students (who probably have a very large footprint compared to the rest of society) is just not there and it should be especially when it’s as easy as offering to recycle.

Finally, I learned that we are truly in plastic handcuffs when it comes to saving the environment. Looking at the life I live now I don’t know how we are going to get the country, let alone the world, on board with this minimal plastic idea. How do we stop what’s already here? How do we get rid of an item that we physically cannot break down? Where will all of these items go? How will we replace them in a capitalistic society? After reflecting on Beth Terry’s words I do not feel guilty about the plastic chains I just feel liberated to break them. But how will that translate to a world where our hands are figuratively and literally tied with plastic? That, I do not know.