The Plastic Challenge - John Parker

Our society is based off of many things, the most important things being fossil fuels, food, water, and arguably the most important, plastic! This challenge wasn't particularly tough for me because I didn't go home for Thanksgiving Break so the amount of plastic I could use was very limited and I didn't have that much trouble finding alternatives because I brought the alternatives with me to begin with.

The first product that I had a semi-big problem with was Gatorade bottles, I drink Gatorade a lot and I drink about 3 bottles of it a day because it was a better option for me than drinking soda. So what I did for my alternative was to buy one of the Gatorade water bottles that athletic teams use and then I went to Walmart and bought a container of the Gatorade powder and used that and some water from the water fountain in the dorms to make my own Gatorade instead of buying all the plastic bottles. I learned that the powder Gatorade mixed with water tasted like crap and I really missed the bottled Gatorade but then I realized it was only for the taste and that if I used the powdered Gatorade instead of the bottled Gatorade, I would save about 150 bucks a month which would give me some more flexibility in my budget. Also instead of buying water bottles all the time as well, I just bought a plastic cup that I could fill up at the water fountain and get free water instead of buying bottled water, I know, I learned that water from a fountain is no different that bottled water. Below are the plastic glass and Gatorade bottle that I used for my alternatives, I accidentally threw out the container with the Gatorade powder so I was not able to take a picture of that.

Another alternative that I used was instead of getting my turkey for sandwiches in a plastic container, I would get it from the deli instead. I would wrap it in a heavy paper so that it would retain its freshness and the most important part obviously was that I was not using plastic. I just used normal paper like you would use for a paper bag at a grocery store so I don't think you need a picture to know what I'm talking about.

As you can see in the pictures, I didn't use that much plastic while I was here at Tech over break but I still saved my self future money on buying plastic bottles and other plastic containers for meats and cheeses.

This experience really opened my eyes to a lot of things in the world that involve plastic. Lets face it, if the US didn't use plastic, we would be so screwed, almost everything that is made in the world involves plastic so it would be very hard to see the world becoming plastic free sometime in the future. But if everyone could cut out just a little bit of plastic in their lives, it would save a lot of money and save our oceans and waterways.