Joe Fedie

Joseph R. Fedie

SS3300

               

                This Thanksgiving it was surprising just how much plastic is can be used for a single meal. Paper plate with food that has been involved in plastic in some way, a plastic fork, spoon, knife and either a plastic water bottle or cup. Then after all this has been used once or twice it is thrown into a plastic garbage bag that is thrown away. This was the same thing for twenty people all for lunch and the same thing happened for dinner. Now this is a once a year thing for us, but some people rely on this exclusively and that is a staggering amount of plastic used for one meal that is then discarded, never to be used again. I never realized how reliant we are on plastic in our day to day lives, how securely it has cemented itself into our lives. If you buy almost anything plastic is involved in some way, it could be wrapped in plastic, come in a plastic bag or be made of plastic. Just a simple trip to the store can result in an astonishing amount: items made of or packaged in plastic then placed in plastic bag (unless you bring your own) then brought home. If it was just packaging it has a life of about three seconds before it is thrown away into another disposable plastic bag, not to mention the store plastic bags that then get thrown into this bag.

                In my two days of no disposable plastics it was more difficult than I thought. I got paper bags to throw my trash into and stayed away from any sort of vending machine. Plastic utensils or cups are something I rarely use so avoiding these was much easier. Food is where things got tricky, yogurt, hamburger, chicken, rice, cheese, really almost anywhere I looked was packaged in disposable plastic. The only option I could find was buying bread from a bakery and telling them I dont want a bag and buying meat from a deli. Fruit was fairly easy as I could simply put them in cloth bags. The amount of plastic I had left over was significantly less after I took these measures but ended up costing much more than a normal trip would. It also involved significantly more travel than normal instead of stopping at Wal-Mart like I normally do. Overall the experience was much more expensive and difficult to accomplish which would explain why so many people don't do it. So I concluded that going without any sort of disposable plastics at this point is practically impossible for a modern individual but there are simple steps that can be taken. The cloth bags are relatively simple and work for small trips and using an aluminum water bottle or a drinking fountain instead of buying water. The biggest one is probably using real utensils as they can be washed and reused over and over again for little to no work involved.

Average use (plastic bag from Wal-Mart, yogurt cup, bread bag on the left)

Above is a simple way to drastically reduce plastic usage inspired by my Thanksgiving meal.