Kim Wittig

Over my thanksgiving break, I went home to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Throughout much of the break, I was around the state visiting with different family members and friends. I hardly had any time to sit and relax! However, during the nights I was usually home to observe the amount of plastic my family members and I use within my household.

The first night, I had seen my dad eating snacks. The beer dip was in a plastic container, the chips were in a plastic bag, the peanut butter was in a plastic jar, as well as the jelly, and the bread had been wrapped in a plastic bag. Also, the food within my pantry, refrigerator, and freezer had also come into contact at some point. This could be whether it was contained or wrapped in it, or how it go to my house in a plastic bag or crate on the way to the grocery store.

During this night, I also saw that the soaps and wipes in my laundry room my mom had used to do laundry were in plastic containers; this even includes the basket in which the clothes came out of! My sister’s chemistry lab manual was bound by a plastic ring binding. In order to see all of this, my glasses were also plastic to top it all off after I took my contacts out and put them into a plastic container using solution out of a plastic bottle. Before bed, the toothbrush I used was plastic as well as the bottle containing my toothpaste. The make-up remover I had used also came out of a plastic bottle.

The next morning, almost everything eaten for breakfast had come into contact with plastic in my house. The milk my family had, the water I drank, the bagels, and cream cheese. The television we watched has more plastic than imaginable in it, as well as the computer we challenged the show’s logic on. Sometimes the prices they give for certain items seem like way too much! Also, we had decorated the Christmas tree this day. Many ornaments hung had been plastic amongst the lights with plastic as well strung along the branches.

As far as going days without any plastic, it is not an easy task to accomplish. I used paper bags at the grocery store rather than plastic bags and rather than drinking water from water bottles, I chose to fill my own reusable bottle from the tap or drank glass Snapple. Instead of plastic Christmas ornaments, we hung glass. Rather than using a plastic laundry basket, we used the bag. We used ceramic plates rather than plastic, staples rather than plastic binding, and a glass jar rather than Tupperware. For items used on a daily basis, it is not always that difficult to find a non-plastic alternative. However, it is sometimes less convenient to do so with these items. 

The large, top picture and the top two on the right-hand side are some of the plastics my family and I had used in the two days and the bottom two pictures are then the alternatives we had used, or thought about!