I don’t want to make any kind of broad assumption. There may have been a few reusable steel water bottles at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28.
I have a dream of a land where single serving plastic water bottles are socially unacceptable and events such as this provide free potable water straight from a tanker truck.
A sad fact that defenders of the plastic bag will often use as a comeback is this: The majority of plastic waste in the oceans of the world comes from commercial fishing. I’m not sure what the actual percentages are and I’m guessing that nobody else is either. I did see way too many tangled up nets on the shore in Tunisia.
I spent a lot of my youth trout fishing in the wilderness of Nova Scotia. I remember seeing some plastic waste from recreational fishing as well. Tangles of fishing line, and snagged lures weren’t a surprise. I was pretty judgmental towards the people who tossed the packaging for their fishing gear in and around the lakes and streams and even more so towards the ones who left a pile of garbage from an overnight stay.
Sport-fishing involves some self imposed handicaps and some that are put in place by governments. If you are a fisherman, try to do it without adding to the already disturbing amount of plastic waste in our environment.
“In most preschools, you find mainly girls playing with dolls in the houskeeping and dress-up corner, while boys build with blocks and play with trucks. Teachers and parents unconsciously promote these stereotypes.” – Dolls, Trucks, and Identity: Educators help young children grow beyond gender [http://www.4children.org/issues/1997/november_december/dolls_trucks_and_identity/]
I would love to see a study of kids that did not have a ready access to representative dolls in childhood. Does such a group even exist?
Plasticless recently got a mention in the online version of one of India’s biggest environmental magazines. I think that’s pretty cool. There are a lot of others bloggers doing a great job of covering the basics and fighting the battles with regard to plastic waste. One thing that makes my take on things a bit different is that I have been spending several years living in developing and less developed countries. I have lived among people who consume less than the average American. At the same time I have witnessed the degree to which many people aspire to the kind of consumerism that goes on in America and the rest of the developed world. I also got to see a range of attitudes about waste management from citizens and government. The guilt trips and social trends that bloggers in places like California use to try and effect change do not translate well to the developing world. I like to read publications like Down to Earth because they are written from the perspective of people who live and work in the developing world. Regional governments in India have recently been coming out with very strict plastic bag bans. It will be interesting to see how the society adjusts to this.
Here we see a typical example of washed up plastic. Something about the density and shape of plastic bottle tops seems to make them one of the most common objects in beach litter. Recycling these tops is less economical than recycling PET plastic bottles. Many municipal recycling schemes do not even accept them. I can’t think of very many ways to reuse them effectively. The best option for consumers is to reduce the number of plastic bottle tops that they ‘consume.’ I try to cut my consumption of bottled soft drinks down to almost nothing. When local lemons are in season, I make lots of lemonade with sugar that comes packaged in paper, lemons that come packaged in lemon peels and water that comes from the tap. Actually, just about any kind of whole fruit can offer the sugar boost that people are craving when they buy a bottled beverage. We generations of effective advertising to thank for the high consumption of bottled soft drinks that seems normal to so many people around the world.
Nylon rope has almost completely replaced natural fiber rope because of its durability. Take a long walk on the beach and you will probably find some pieces of nylon rope.
Rope made from natural fiber like hemp and cotton are better for some purposes and just as good for many others. For any purpose that puts lives on the line, use whatever is recommended by experts. For less important uses, try natural rope first. I even make my own rope from rags. It is pretty easy and it works great. I wouldn’t go mountain climbing or yachting with the stuff, but I’m not doing either of those things anyway.
I have lived on a Mediterranean Island so long that I can spell Mediterranean right the first time. You know I see more than my share of these cheap plastic toys. I honestly think that taking a field guide to marine life to the beach and spending some time searching for cool stuff with your kids would provide better entertainment. We found a fossilized shark’s tooth a few years ago.
I’ve just finished reading a fascinating account of some personal direct action from a Canadian who is living and working in Morocco. Robbin Yager provides Tours and Treks in Morocco. One day she decided to roll up her sleeves and start clearing plastic trash out of some of the dry riverbeds in that country.
Here is a summary from her page on direct action:
Over the 10 years I’ve been living and working in Morocco, I’ve seen plastic grow from a few bags blowing across the Sahara, to clogged rivers and watersheds everywhere, from a few bags left by roadsides to huge dumps into ravines and gorges. In developing countries where information is not readily available to citizens, it can take governments a long time to develop solutions for problems. I believe people learn and are encouraged by example. Tourism is very important in Morocco. As a tourist anyone can make the problem seen and heard most easily by taking direct action. And I have to add, it feels so very good to pick up that first bag!
I have never undertaken any trash cleanups as ambitious as hers. When I was in Tunisia, I would walk for a few kilometers on the beach and pick up as much as I could carry. I always worried about where this trash went after I placed it in the dumpsters. Recycling in that region was pretty much limited to those few items that were profitable such as corrugated paper and plastic beverage containers. I was once confronted by a guard as I approached the fence of a beach resort while picking up garbage. I didn’t have the command of the language that it would take to make a nuanced response when I was asked what I was doing. This was a tense and awkward moment and it was discouraging.
When I first moved to Malta five years ago, I spent the first month living in a cheap apartment on the outskirts of a resort area. There was a lot of litter. Whenever I was putting our recyclables and garbage on the curb, I would always spend some time adding to our allotment from the stuff that was lying around outside. One day, a British expat across the street was laughing at me and telling me how futile it was to pick up trash. I think his words were ‘You’ll never get t all.”
I will never get it all but I still make a point of getting some of it. I am not a strong swimmer, so when the rest of the family is snorkeling in the deep I dive around in the shallows picking up ice cream cups and coke bottles and plastic bags and bendy straws. When I have gathered an armload of trash, I usually have to walk to a receptacle that is conveniently located next to businesses that cater to tourists. The big sunglasses that are in vogue prevent me from accurately gauging the looks that I get from these tourists. I have never had anyone join me.
Littering is one a a handful of social and environmental issues that I keep my nose out of when I am a guest in a foreign country. I do keep up with the local news and I quietly cheer on any local people who are speaking up about those issues. Tunisia has an official mascot for environmentalism. It is a cartoonish looking fennec fox that is often mistaken as a mouse by tourists. Malta finally has a real tax on plastic bags. Tourists sometime grumble and pay the Euro 0.25 per bag. Locals use reusable bags or sometimes cardboard boxes.
I think spending some time picking up litter while you are on vacation is a great idea. If you want to plan a vacation around cleaning up plastic trash, Hawaii sounds like the perfect place.
I would like to drink more tap water because it’s less expensive and it doesn’t require any packaging. Unfortunately, the public water supply here on Gozo is quite high in sodium. The most extensive information that I could find regarding water quality in Gozo is ten years old. It states that 84.2% of samples exceeded the parameters set for sodium content by an EU directive. There was also this explanation:
This substance occurs naturally
in water. Standard set due to
unacceptable taste. It is
considered to be primarily
attributed to the islands’
hydrogeological characteristics
and environmental conditions.
My taste buds tell me that the salt is still there. We used a Brita filter pitcher when we lived in Tunisia. It effectively improved the taste of the tap water and gave us peace of mind with regard to all the unhealthy stuff that these filters can remove. Those are Lead, Mercury, Benzene, Cadmium, Copper and Zinc and more. It doesn’t remove Sodium. It doesn’t claim to. Since we already had the Brita we tried it anyway. Sure enough, the Gozo water filtered with a simple gravity fed Brita filter is still just as salty.
The easy choice for tasty drinking water is to buy it in 2 liter recyclable plastic bottles. That was our short term way to survive while we arranged for the next best thing – 19 liter returnable plastic bottles delivered by a company that uses RO filtration and UV sterilization to make the public water palatable. The cost is about the same as the water in recyclable plastic with the main advantages being that bottles are reused and of course that they are delivered to our door. A third choice that might have some cost savings is to buy a counter-top filtration system. They cost hundreds of euros but should in theory pay for themselves. We can’t justify the investment because we expect to be relocating before the ROI would kick in.
There are a few ways that we consume the tap water. With of our baking and stove top cooking we use tap water whenever water is in the recipe. The tap water makes a great lemonade with the locally grown lemons that are a reasonable euro1.50 per kg. We make tea with tap water. Many other strategies that people use for making use of bad tasting water are too unhealthy. I have no plans of drinking the Kool-aid.
Do you have tap water that doesn’t taste good? If so, do you have any interesting ways to alter it to make it more palatable?
The recent demise of our Teflon frying pan was greeted as an opportunity to find a plasticless alternative. I have always been a fan of cast iron cookware. but I haven’t been able to find any pans locally. I wasn’t able to find them when I was in Tunisia either. Tunisia has local aluminum fabrication so aluminum cookware was abundant and affordable. I left my aluminum cookware in Tunisia for others to enjoy.
Earlier this week we picked up a blue steel frying pan from a catering supply store. It costs about the same as a similar sized Teflon pan with the big difference being that it could last forever. You have to season a steel pan with repeated treatments of oil and heat. Here is a link to some Amazon reviews of a similar product. People really love these pans.
Teflon is a plastic. Some studies have raised concerns that using these pans can add dangerous toxins to your food. From what I have read do far, this doesn’t seem to be a huge problem. The biggest environmental drawback with Teflon is that toxins are released into the environment during it’s production. Steel fabrication has an environmental cost as well, but I have to assume that buying and using one steel frying pan for a lifetime is greener than buying a new Teflon pan every year or two.
Choosing the most durable products for preparing food at home is a reasonably green activity. Preparing food at home from unpackaged local ingredients is a very green activity.
