When I began my 24-hour plastic recording journey, I knew that my list would be rather long. I use plastic for everything, we all do, especially in college. Our parents send us home with leftovers in plastic containers, we use plastic plates and forks in our dorms, we eat our snacks from plastic bags. We are all guilty of using plastic in everyday life. However, the number of plastic products that I used and recorded during my study was astronomical.

Throughout my day, I recorded everything I touched or came in contact with that was made of plastic. Many times throughout the day I wrote down items that I had never even noticed were made of plastic. Things such as the refrigerator handle, the wheels on your chair, or the light switch are not items you automatically associate as plastics, but you use them daily. I found myself coming into contact with so many plastic products that I did not want to write them down anymore. I started to feel guilty in the realization of how much plastic I truly use. By the end of my 24- hour study, I had almost 100 different plastic products written on my paper!

I never could have imagined that I use that much plastic in one day. I felt extremely guilty about how much I have been contributing to the earth’s declining health. The next morning, I decided that I would be more conscious about the plastics that I use. I redid the 24-hour study to see how much I could improve my own habits in one day. Again, I recorded every plastic product that I touched; however, this time I only used plastic products that were essential to me. These products include items such as pencils, phones, chairs, etc. By the end of that 24-hour study, I had decreased my plastic use from almost 100 products to almost 15 products.

After the two study days, I decided that I would continue using less plastic and I would try to be conscious of how often I use it. I am now making it my personal goal to use less plastic and be a better human to the earth.

As I started my day out on Wednesday, September 15th, I started to collect small items throughout my day that would eventually lead to a pile of small objects that were used for one time at my convenience, and frankly I was disgusted with myself at the end of the day. Not by the fact that there was a small pile I collected on my bed to take a photo of, but at the thought of how little effort it takes to use and get rid of so many pieces of plastic throughout my day.

Plastic use, in todays societal and economic standard, is almost impossible to get away from. With American society producing 380 million tons of plastic every year, we are geared to using it in everyday lives. As I carried around a bag with me all day I realize that if everyone around me is using and disposing with the same patterns, even though I am more conscious of due to this class, then there is millions of pieces of plastics floating around all day.

Here is a collection of all the pieces of disposable plastic that I gathered with me throughout my day here on campus, and believe me, it was more than I was hoping for. Going back between each dining halls or making a stop in the morning at Einstein Bagels resulted in looking for the most convenient options that loaded my bag up with different pieces of trash throughout my day. I do believe that this pile of trash is well represented of my day to day life as I usually am in and out of the dining halls all day as I go from different classes. Around campus there’s a lot of Eco options that allow many of the ‘plastic’ items to be correctly disposed of but with the hustle and bustle of the day most college students forget about the ‘eco’ part of their plastic.

From this experiment and collection I learned that there is much more oblivion in my day than I realize, that I constantly am contributing to a carbon footprint with no actual realization of what Im putting and taking out of our environment consistently throughout my days. I have learned to challenge myself and put myself on a higher standard for my plastic consumption and use on campus while utilizing the sources the college puts in order to maintain a smaller carbon footprint. I think this experiment was valuable in that it was a tangible effort that granted me hands on visual learning of what I was really doing throughout my day. To put in conscious efforts throughout my day would allow at least some impact on my carbon footprint. I don’t think this specific day in my life increased or decreased my average days carbon footprint, as there was nothing truly unusual about the plastic I was using throughout the day.

I believe that finding resources around you that will help you be more ecofriendly in the long run. For example, near my parents house on Johns Island is a major recycling facility that helps sort and organize different sections of plastics and major products of waste that I have been using frequently this past summer.

I think its unreasonable to feel guilty towards ones own consumption and plastic usage if there were recently oblivious to the impact that their increasing rates had on their environment. I believe that if every individual could make a conscious and educated choice about their plastic usage, then society would decrease their rapid damages and human kind could be less ashamed of their plastic consumption rates

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.