Reduce plastic waste :: PlasticLess.com

Ok, Millar’s Coffee comes in a paper bag, so this isn’t entirely off-topic. Truthfully though. the reason that I have spent the last half hour checking out their website is that the idea of a wood-fired roaster appealed to me.

If you are in the Vancouver or Portland area, be sure to try some Millars Wood Roasted Coffee. Before being roasted over a hardwood fire, the beans are rested in old bourbon barrels.

I have recently relocated. I am living near the spot where I grew up on the east coast of Canada. Being back here has me thinking about all kinds of land stewardship issues. The family that runs Millars Coffee thinks about this a lot too and they decided long ago to only use naturally felled or over mature trees for their fuel. The coffee is not roasted from trees that were cut down when they were still healthy and growing.

I am reusing a statement made by Jason Sweeney as my title for this post. Those three words have sent my mind in a hundred different directions thinking about what impact the human pursuit of perfection has on this planet. Most of it isn’t good, some of it is involves plastic.

The concept was still rattling around in my head when I went to the kitchen this morning to make the kids some French toast with cooked fruit topping. The apples that I bought on Friday are not perfect. They look like the apples that I used to scrounge from abandoned homesteads in Canada. They taste delicious.

Consumers in the developed world supposedly want perfect apples. The customer is always right, and those customers get pesticides, genetic engineering and lots of protective packaging.

Photo credit: Brett L

I was happy to see this big bin installed on the public beach access this summer. A lot of water bottles that may have otherwise ended up in the sea are placed in it. At the same time it serves as a daily reminder to me that collecting and recycling plastics is a costly and inefficient process. My blog is supposed to focus on the first ‘R’, Reduction. I have reduced my own consumption of plastic water bottles as much as possible by drinking filtered tap water.

Here are a few quotes that I have found, both optimistic and pessimistic about recycling plastic…

Recycling is almost universally regarded as a virtue. I beg to differ. The act of recycling actually means that we have failed to reduce or reuse.
- Gary Hirshberg

Recycling a single plastic bottle can conserve enough energy to light a 60W bulb for up to 6 hours.
- South Lakeland Recycling

I am not sure how they got these numbers. The fact that a lot of plastic is transported for huge distances leads me to doubt the figure.

The majority of the plastics we recycle, regardless of type, end up in China, where worker safety standards are virtually nonexistent and materials are processed under dirty, primitive conditions…
- Mindfully.org

Recycling one ton of plastic saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space.
- Earth911

These quotes are starting to look like ‘tweets’. Maybe I will recycle them

What does this guy think of my efforts to reduce plastic waste?

I was walking down a hill in a part of town that was evidently far outside of the ‘Zone Touristic’ and I saw this guy pulling his cart up the hill. I used basic sign language to ask if it was ok to take his picture. Later, I crossed the street to thank him and give him a dinar. I don’t ask people involved questions about their business in this country. In part it is because we have a shared second language and my fluency is lacking. Add to that the fact that a minority of the people here aren’t fluent in French either.

The real issue is social. I empathize with these guys and imagine being very annoyed by a foreigner, who I would perceive to be rich and privileged, asking me for details about my hard fought existence. When I was in my 20s, I had a job as part of the landscaping crew at an international airport. One day, a Japanese tourist stopped for a few moments to take pictures of me digging a trench. He was a gardening enthusiast and he asked me about the specifics of the task. I was, specifically, burying an extension cord for a temporary traffic sign. He was disappointed in the answer and I didn’t feel like I got any benefit from the interaction either.

Even if it was possible for me to have a free flowing conversation with a bottle collector in a developing country, I am not sure what questions to ask. I could ask how long he works each day. I could ask him if he earns enough money to provide for his needs. I could ask him if he is choosing this work over any social programs that would also provide for his needs. I could ask him if he gets any satisfaction from removing litter from the environment (my impression is that dumpsters are the preferred source of bottles).

Since I can’t ask or answer these questions, I will have to add some value to this post by linking to what other people have written on the subject.

Here is a unique perspective from a Chinese blogger who is spending time in Europe. Qian Qin was surprised to see bottle collectors in Berlin and he decided to do the math. He determined that they were rivaling local waiters in potential earnings. There is a 25 cent deposit in Germany. This means that most people don’t trash their bottles, but you can always count on a few.

A Canadian commenting on Qian Qin’s post said that the refund is only 0.5 cents there. It’s more than that in some provinces. When I was working in a big factory in 2001, there were two older employees that had a turf war about the empty pop cans in the numerous lunchrooms around the property. They felt that it was worthwhile to spend their breaks from $10-17/hr jobs to collect cans. The shopping cart guys in the cities mostly seemed a little crazy.

Here in northern Africa, they bottle collectors don’t look crazy, for the most part. They are typically old enough to not have kids to feed.

John Romankiewicz wrote a post about recyclable collectors in Beijing. There are an estimated 160,000 people gathering all kinds of discarded materials in that city. The global economic crisis hit their bottom line hard, as I suspect it did to people in this business almost everywhere.

With so many poor people relying on our culture of waste, I worry about the consequences of the efforts of people like me to reduce that waste. The hard fact is, things has to change.

I have been blogging about alternatives to plastic for almost two years and I have hardly ever mentioned hemp. It’s not because I haven’t looked into it as an alternative material. It’s partly because the body of information online is sullied with the unfocused ramblings of stoned slackers. It’s mostly because I sometimes publish unfocused ramblings and I don’t want my mom or anyone else to incorrectly assume that I am a stoned slacker.

Hemp was actually displaced by other natural fibers before plastics like nylon and polyester were invented. During the Industrial Revolution materials like wood pulp, cotton, jute and manila were found to be more suitable for large scale mechanized production of paper, textiles, rope and other products. Technological advances also meant that rope ceased to be as vital to commerce as it once was. When the US government used a tax law to prohibit hemp and marijuana in the 1930s, there was no strong lobby to oppose the move.

Hemp does have some unique attributes. It is fast growing and dense. This means that herbicides are not required for hemp production. The length and strength of its bast fibers are actually a significant stumbling block because they make it difficult or impossible to retrofit existing processing facilities. Canada has fostered a fledgling hemp industry since the 90s and the biggest problem has been the risk of oversupplying the market for the fiber. Basically, production is infinitely scalable while processing and market demand are not.

Hemp should be part of the solution to the plastic problem, but my opinion is that it won’t be anytime soon because of logistics and more obviously because it is illegal to grow it in the USA.

There are some good hemp products on the retail market including reusable shopping bags. The information on this organic hemp products website suggests that many hemp products are made in China where they are processed using toxic chemicals and manufactured using unfair labor practices.

Update: I went back to this topic this afternoon and found a few websites belonging to large technologically advanced hemp processors. They make some pretty interesting products including auto components. With all the recent concerns about plastic auto parts off-gassing into the interior of new cars, hemp might find a niche in this industry.

I just took a quick look at the partnership between the Sierra Club and Staples that encourages people to recycle their old cell phones and PDAs. The third partner in this program is Collective Good and they actually focus on Reuse. I take every opportunity to preach about the hierarchy of the three ‘R’s. We should first do everything we can to REDUCE. The second priority is REUSE. RECYCLING, while still important is in third place. Why does the least important action get the most attention? I think it is a case of ‘brand recognition’ plus the fact that their are very few instances where a reduction or reuse program can benefit the bottom line of any kind of business.

I grew up with Tonka toys. They were mostly hand-me-downs from older cousins. Back when I was a kid they were steel with some plastic parts. They were durable. I wouldn’t call them indestructible. My dad drove a real dump truck and we occasionally left our toys on the lane.

Tonka started out as a company that made steel rails. They got the toy idea from a neighboring business that failed. Tonka was a huge success. I am writing about Tonka on a blog that is all about reducing plastic waste because Tonka toys are increasingly being made out of plastic. The company was bought by Hasbro (the people who make Mister PlasticHead) in 1991. Hasbro has discontinued many of the metal toys. I can’t be bothered to do the research, but I assume there was a concurrent shift away from domestic manufacturing. My observations lead me to believe that plastic Tonka toys are less durable than metal. Hasbro has a ‘Classic’ line of Tonka toys with steel parts, but many of the toys that I grew up with are discontinued.

Playing with toy trucks in the dirt seems to be something that kids thrive on. I think buying used toys that have proven durability is a wise decision. Some kids are just as happy to play with kid sized garden tools.

If you and your kids don’t have access to an outdoor imagination excavation, wooden trucks make great indoor toys.

Vintage Tonka photo credit: Steve-Photos, Others: fair use from Toys(backwards R)Us and Hasbro.

I have made the case against making babies from a few different angles on this blog and elsewhere. It’s always a good way to stimulate discussion. I am personally responsible for one pregnancy. If and when you create a human, you will need to buy or borrow things that have been designed to contain and transport them safely.

Moses’ parents supposedly stuck him in a reed basket and sent him floating down the Nile, I don’t personally recommend that method of child carrying even though it was very plasticless.

Parents in many countries are now required by law to place young children in age appropriate car seats. 15 years ago, I borrowed two infant car seats from some community program. I returned them once my babies reached the minimum weight requirement for the next step up in car seats. As far as I know, all baby car seats are made from plastic. The best thing that you can do to reduce environmental impact is to borrow a seat from a family member or a community program. You should read up on proper installation and adjustment of these things. Having one doesn’t make your baby safe, you have to use it correctly.

Green Baby Guide says that car seats up to six years old are safe as long as all the parts are there and in good condition. It’s better to say thanks but no thanks to family and friends that offer you anything older or in any way worn out.

If you have to buy a new car seat, take good care of it and save all the packaging and user manuals for the next owner.

Our baby carriage was a crazily overpriced metal framed Italian job. I was assured that they had a high resale value. I have conveniently forgotten whether that was true. I was impressed by the quality. We lived on a road with a gravel shoulder, so those crappy little strollers with the little plastic wheels weren’t going to cut it.

If you want to do what is best for your baby and also better for the planet you have a lot of options to choose from.

Lots of people swear by baby slings. I have never used one, so I can’t really vouch for them. There have been safety concerns. Most injuries that have occurred are the result of improper use.

Photo Credit: AMCDawes

I did a lot of baby carrying without a sling. I once made the terrible mistake of attempting to walk down my unfinished wooden basement steps while wearing wool socks. I had a baby in my arms. I managed to fall in such a way as to gently plop the baby one step up from where my head landed with less gentleness and about four steps up from the where my ass landed without even a hint of gentleness. Carrying babies with your bare hands might be the greenest choice, but it is not the safest.

Combination car seat/strollers didn’t exist when I had babies. They are plastic, but they are one hunk of plastic that does the job of two. They also meet the requirements for taking on board an airplane. If anybody has had good or bad experience with one of these, please comment.

This is the closing paragraph on the front page of a Canadian plastic industry website:

The Canadian plastics industry has had a decades-long commitment to product stewardship and environmental responsibility to ensure the wise use and recycling of plastic shopping bags.

In case you are confused, the word ensure means to make sure, certain or safe. So essentially the Canadian plastic industry claims a 100% recycling rate.

To their credit, recycling rates are very high in some parts of Canada. Prince Edward Island is an absolute anomaly in North America with a recycling rate of 57% for plastic bags.

The main population centers of Canada are more in line with the rest of the continent with recycling rates in the single digits. (pdf)

The pdf link is to a report from a plastic bag reduction task group that strangely enough includes the Canadian Plastics Industry Association. Reduction is the wisest thing that we can do with regard to plastic consumption. I don’t think the plastic industry people are going to ensure that.

Title Credit: Adapted from title by Dream Warriors

The plastics industry has been accused of using the same rationale that has been the mantra of the NRA. Their version would be “Plastic bags don’t choke marine animals, people choke marine animals.”

They cite sources. A couple of the links they provide direct back to a very general EPA page about municipal waste.

The fact that none of the facts say anything about plastic says something about plastic.

It entertained me for a moment to imagine a bunch of plastics industry executives doing a careful survey of all the litter in the English-speaking world (I hope the picked most of it up while they were at it). I am not living in the English-speaking world right now, so I can’t counter their fact with a random survey.