Reduce plastic waste :: PlasticLess.com

Use Less Plastic from TakePart on Vimeo.

This cause is really starting to gain some attention. There is now a big flashy site called Save My Oceans with a page devoted to the issue of plastic waste. I would love to see some statistics later on to see how much real reduction results from all of our efforts.

I try to reduce the amount of packaging that I bring into my house but sometimes I impulsively buy something just because I like the packaging. I tell myself that I can reuse that packaging. I don’t have a specific need for that material but I somehow just know that it is the solution to a problem that I don’t even know I have. This morning as I was putting away the empty egg containers that I actually do use (for containing eggs that are sold unpackaged from the back of a truck), I saw an old frenemy in the back of the cupboard. The burlap potato bag that I bought this winter.

As I wondered what to do with it for about the hundredth time it dawned on me that I should just write this post asking for suggestions. So what do you think I should do with this material?

I recently received two beautiful cotton batik reusable shopping bags from Wrapsacks.com. These bags fold and zip into a compact size. I like the way that the outside of the storage pouch doubles as a reinforced bottom for the bag. I am happy to finally have a grocery bag with shoulder length straps. Upon closer examination, I noticed that the strap material goes all the way down the sides of the bag and into the reinforced bottom. This should make them a lot more durable than the cheap bags that I bought on the street in Bizerte. The cheap bags have mostly held up for more than a year, but there have been two handle failures. One failure was the result of very heavy groceries and the other bag got caught in a bus door with me still standing on the sidewalk.

Catherine loves the ‘Marrakesh’ design (shown above). When I added this brand of bags to my reusable bag roundup earlier this month, I mentioned the wide variety of designs. Most of the designs are what I would describe as pretty. They were smart to include a design that’s not pretty and, strangely enough, it’s my favorite. The ‘Pedal Power’ pattern has black block printed bicycles and bicycle chains over a background of earthy oranges and browns. It would be perfect for anybody who drives their bike to the farmer’s market.

Michael Miner, the co-creator of Wrapsacks, regularly visits the production facility in Indonesia where the bags are ethically produced. While he was there recently, he took some stunning photographs of the batik dyeing process. I love the fact that they are still using the power of the sun as a dye fixative.

It’s a nice coincidence that I received these free review samples right before leaving for Gozo, where the plastic shopping bag has just recently become the target of some regulation. They had tried a small bag tax years ago, but retailers were willing to absorb the cost rather than inconvenience customers who were set in their ways. Now they charge 0.18 Euros.

Let’s get this out of the way first. Plastic waste doesn’t CAUSE flooding. Rain causes flooding.

Discarded plastic bags and plastic bottles DO impact the efficiency of flood control systems in several ways. Besides the obvious potential for clogging drains, plastic waste can also take up a lot of the volume in detention ponds. These problems are either dealt with using taxpayer funded labor and equipment, or they can be ignored with the hope that it never rains all that much. The danger presented by an accumulation of plastic trash in an urban storm drain can prove deadly after days of heavy rain.

Photo credit: bjornmeansbear

Plastic bags were made the scapegoat during a particularly deadly monsoon season in Mumbai in 2005. Plastic bags did clog the system. The system was very old and not designed to deal with the massive population that live in shanties clustered around the city center. The system was also poorly maintained. The system was built before plastic bags were imaginable. Laws against plastic bags had been imposed before the 2005 floods that killed over 1000 people.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have places like Salt Lake County, Utah. It’s not a place where you expect to hear about deadly floods. It’s infrastructure is not particularly ancient or under funded. Plastic garbage does accumulate in the drainage system. Draper is a city of just under 40,000 people and it employs 3 people full time to clean the trash and debris from the drains. There are almost 14 million people in Mumbai. I don’t know if they have 1,000 people cleaning out the storm sewers, but that’s how many people it would take to be proportional to Draper. Littering is more prevalent in the developing world, so Mumbai should probably have several thousand people cleaning out the storm drains. They do have a squad of Plastic Bag Police.

Making an individual choice to use less plastic won’t do much to prevent floods, but if everyone made the same choice it could make a huge difference

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 to confess that I have never thrown a party for dozens of people. I am an introvert. If I were to wake up as an entirely different person and decide to have a big bash for all of the acquaintances that I would call my friends, I would try to figure out an alternative to the disposable plastic beer glass.

Disposable plastic beer glasses are recommended by many authorities on serving alcohol at large parties…

…You need to invest in some plastic beer cups. The investment is relatively cheap. You can get a large stack of plastic beer cups for about the same price you are going to pay for a bottle of dish detergent to clean all those glasses.

The savings in time is astronomically higher. Instead of washing and drying all those glasses, just pull out a black plastic bag, sweep them all into it, and you’re done.

I think the most obvious alternative to plastic beer glasses is to have your guests drink straight from returnable glass bottles. The only drawback that I can see with this is the safety issue. I attended an Agricultural College in Canada. I saw a lot of beer drinking at pubs and events. Most of these events did not involve disposable cups and I can only remember a handful of bottle related injuries. One or two of them were very memorable.

A slightly more inventive alternative would be to ask your guests to bring their own drinking vessel. Those wacky medieval recreationists do that all the time.

Serving beer from plastic laundry detergent jugs is a step in the wrong direction. Don’t do it.

If your party is commemorating something important, you could shell out for keepsake glassware. If you bring home a beer glass or champagne flute from someone’s special day, don’t have it sitting on your windowsill filled with plant cuttings that you are trying to root when they visit you after the divorce. I’m just sayin’.

According to the people who make plastic pallets, they are better that wooden ones in almost every way.

Plastic pallet has many advantages compared with wooden one as follows: less weight, neat and good appearance, no nails or splinters, no odour,no poison, impervious to acids & alkalis, no sparkles, explosion proof, skidproof, high value in return use. Its original dimension, rigidity and impact strength will last for many years.

As is well known to us, it is dangerous to operate with wooden pallets. Plastic pallet guarantees security for a long period. It is suitable for food, aquatic products, health, chemicals, apparel, shoes, electronics & electrical, rubber, fertilizer, feedstuff, port, and so on. It has become a good assistance in storage and transition and ideal packing container for factory and enterprise.

I spent a good chunk of my working life around wooden pallets and I have to concede a few of the points made by the makers of plastic pallets. They don’t last forever and sometimes a person ahead of you in the supply chain decides to try to get one more use out of a pallet that should have been diverted to salvage from their place of business.

I still prefer wood because it comes from a renewable resource and it is biodegradable. Companies have the option of using FSC certified wooden pallets. Of course, I am not in a position to decide what kind of pallet is used to cart my consumer goods around the world.

The coffee roastery where I worked in 2004-2005 gave away worn out pallets to a local person who built boxes for apple harvesting. While I was working there we made some major changes to our supply logistics and started receiving green coffee in full containers with no pallets. I made a custom order at a local pallet maker for large, heavy hardwood pallets for our new warehouse.

I will be keeping my eye out for plastic pallets on the beaches in the future.