it’s a plastic, fantastic world

2 CommentsApr 22.08 / alsorts, handmade, home / by erin

this earth day i made my second bulk baggu bag order of the year. they have new colours for spring!
clockwise from left: baggu bags / eco bags reusable produce bags / sigg water bottles

my parents are the 2 most well-travelled people i have ever met, and barring a chance encounter with the lonely planet guy, that’s probably not going to change any time soon. i got into a long argument with them over the weekend about their anemic costco tomatoes in plastic containers. it seemed like every item in their fridge, even the whole foods, was in a plastic container. my mum always has a costco flat of bottled water in the back of her SUV and she argues it’s the only time she really drinks water. nevermind that they are on a well and she can get what is probably the healthiest, best tasting water on earth right out of her tap. she’s convinced that water out of a plastic bottle tastes better and is better for you. it’s infuriating and it’s all just so wasteful, and she knows it. they don’t even feel like they’re being wasteful because they know that they recycle their plastics, and that the slate-look roof on their house is largely made of recycled plastics, so they don’t see a problem in having 3 garbage bags full of plastic for the recycling guy to pick up every other week. like the rest of the world they seem to have forgotten that the first 2 Rs are reduce and reuse and that just recycling isn’t good enough. the trouble with being so well travelled is that it’s made my parents so cynical that they feel justified in their wastefulness. they think that reducing their waste would be a pointless drop in the bucket. they see all the people in the developing nations of the world who toss their plastics into the ocean as the real problem. i find their outlook disillusioned and apathetic and they think mine is naive and idealistic.

when i was in kindergarten there was a big tree next to the playground that was full of tent caterpillars. i saw a group of kids jumping up and down, squashing them for no reason and i yelled at them to stop. they circled around me and taunted me with my new nickname “little miss nature, little miss nature, little miss nature.” that didn’t seem so horribly insulting to me. as a little girl i was really holier than thou. at 6 i yelled at a little boy for throwing his styrofoam cup into the fire and told him that he just released CFCs that would make the hole in the ozone layer bigger. it’s no wonder earth day is so focussed on little kids. they have a much more black and white sense of right and wrong, and god knows they’re annoying to live with if you do something they think you shouldn’t be doing. this earth day i noticed a cartoon on youtube teaching kids about the eastern garbage patch, something i doubt more than a handful of their parents have ever heard of. even little miss nature hadn’t heard of it until last year.

from left: a large entanglement of debris found off the coast of Hawaii from algalita.org / water sampled from the gyre

when i first heard about the eastern garbage patch i was horrified. discovered in 1997 by captain charles moore, the garbage patch, gyre or garbage island is in the middle of nowhere — 7 days by boat off the coast of california — yet this area twice the size of the state of texas contains more plastic than plankton by an average ratio of 6 to 1. in some areas there is 1000x more plastic than plankton. degraded into tiny pieces, this plastic acts like a toxic sponge, and this plastic full of toxins known to cause obesity, infertility and worse enters the food chain when accidentally and unavoidably ingested by marine life. hans and i spent an evening drinking red wine, scaring ourselves with the things we read and saw. cleaning up the ocean isn’t as simple as taking out a few boats to collect garbage. most of the plastic is like confetti; the gyre is a toxic snowglobe. all that we can do is keep it from getting worse, so fueled by wine and good intentions we swore to not buy plastics anymore. well that’s easier said than done isn’t it? have you ever tried to find basic essentials like dental floss, toothpaste or shampoo that aren’t packaged in plastic? i don’t think it can be done! even consumers with the best intentions can’t get away from plastic.

while i know that my parents are right that most of the plastic floating around out there is from southeast asia, i also know that these are the countries that are manufacturing our products and that we in the west are continuing to fuel this wastefulness. if we refuse to buy products wrapped in plastic would it make a difference? would companies be forced to change if it made no financial sense to continue manufacturing and packaging everything in plastic? i know that america is the most wasteful, all-consuming country in the world. if america changed would it make any difference if china and india with their incredible populations and desire to have all the riches of the west do not? i’ve seen the photos from my parents’ trips — the beaches in taiwan that look like landfills — i get it. i understand that the only way we’ll be able to save earth is by causing change in the second and third world through education. i just don’t think that excuses a total lack of change among us westerners. why should anyone else change if we, the supposedly educated and wealthy can’t be bothered to?

great produce bags available from etsy sellers bag green and lime bean home

hans and i bought baggu bags for everyone in our families at christmas. my mum’s birthday is in a couple of weeks and guess what? she’s getting more baggu bags, and a sigg water bottle too. i think she could learn to love the taste of water without the hint of plastic she seems to love so much. if she’s lucky i might even get her some re-useable produce bags from reusablebags.com or etsy. i might not be cute anymore, but i can still be really annoying to live with.

captain moore sets out on several research expeditions each year and a blog chronicles each voyage daily. vice magazine’s VBS.com is on day 10 of their 12 part series “garbage island”, filmed during moore’s 3 week long research expedition last september. most of the mini-episodes are dumbed down in true vice style, but i think this one is a good snap shot of these “journalists” realizing the scope of the problem:

Comments (2)

Add a Comment