Reduce plastic waste :: PlasticLess.com

Conflicting scientists, greenwashing corporations, self-congratulatory conspicuous consumers of green products… I think the noise to signal ratio is getting a little out of whack. I have less direct connection to nature than I used to. As a child, I used to go fishing along a tributary of the Musquodoboit River. In the spring, green was everywhere. There were fiddlehead ferns emerging from sun speckled patched on the thick blanket of moss that lined the forest floor. There was the dark green of fir boughs.

When I grew up, I worked in the lumber industry to support my young family. The huge sawmill was fed a steady diet of wilderness and it grew as the wilderness shrank. I had already left the country when the sawmill shut down due to a perfect storm of financial factors. I felt sorry for all those who lost their jobs, but I was also kind of happy to imagine the forest having a chance to catch it’s breath. I was wrong about that. The greenwashing steamroller is cruising through my childhood home in the form of a multi-national company harvesting biomass. It’s not green and it’s not pretty. I applaud environmentalists that choose to devote their lives to trying to save wilderness areas from being consumed. I have had the pleasure of meeting and working with people who are passionate about sustainable forestry. These people are green.

Am I green? I’m having a hard time answering that question. I try to consume less. I do what I can to avoid polluting. I devote time and energy to creating this blog that is devoted to one focused issue. Sometimes I worry that I should be taking some sort of stand or shifting my focus to an issue that needs more attention. Other bloggers are doing a better job of bringing attention to the issue of plastic waste. My choice of location feels green to me in some ways but not in others. There are local vegetables available year round, but my drinking water comes from a desalination plant that burns fossil fuels. I can live car free, but friends and family have to fly on an airplane to visit me. Right now, I think that the greenest thing I can do is to teach my children to think in terms of sustainability.

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This BBC video provides a look at the plastic items found in stomachs of albatrosses, ingested from the Pacific ocean. The organized collection of objects looks a lot like the stuff that I found on the shores of the Mediterranean. Cheap disposable plastic consumer goods are a worldwide phenomenon. The baby albatross has become the poster child for their consequence. They starve to death because their parents mistakenly feed them plastic objects. This tragedy is easy for people to grasp and it is heart wrenching for animal lovers. There are plenty of other species who suffer. Plastic breaks down in the ocean and in some areas the tiny bits of plastic outnumber plankton. Animals that have evolved to feed on plankton are eating mostly plastic. Toxins contained in and absorbed by this plastic enter the food chain.

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I am somewhat romantic. Really, I am. I just don’t tend to equate romanticism with gift giving. Valentine’s Day will always have an element of meh for me thanks to the conspiracy between card manufacturers and elementary school teachers. I know that I am a bit of an exception in this regard, so I am offering this gift suggestion for the people that want to give a heart-shaped consumer good to their sweetie.

The folks at Wrapsacks have a Valentine’s package featured on their site that includes 2 reusable shopping totes that zip up into a heart-shaped pouch as well as 1 medium fabric gift bag. I have been using their shopping totes for the last 3 months and they are awesome. They have handles that are long enough to put over your shoulder but they are sized so that they aren’t too close to the ground if you choose to hold them in your hand. The handle material goes all the way down the sides of the bag so they aren’t the weakest part of the bag. I’ve had cheaper bags lose their handles after a few months of carrying stuff.

*Wrapsacks provided me with free bags for the purposes of review. I don’t typically ask for or receive review products because of my remote location.

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