Reduce plastic waste :: PlasticLess.com

I am growing a moustache all this month as part of the Movember campaign to raise money to fight prostate cancer. Please consider making a donation on my behalf

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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

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More people should be carrying water from their house to their place of work. I read recently that most people don’t drink as much water as they should. A stainless steel water container in your bag or briefcase would be a tactile reminder that you need to hydrate your body throughout the day. A pocketful of quarters could buy an overpriced plastic bottle of water from a cafeteria or vending machine, but many of us would be swayed by the sugary drinks and snacks that are often in the same vicinity.

I do not own a stainless steel water bottle. They are highly recommended by Beth Terry of Fake Plastic Fish fame. Back when I was working on my Dad’s farm in the summer, we always drank water from a reused plastic 2 liter soda bottle.

I carried on with that practice during most of my years at the sawmill. As luck would have it, some 21st century technology required the input of purified water, so the company installed a filtration system in one building. We were blessed with some water coolers and a hose from which to refill them.

When I managed to land my awesome job roasting coffee, it was for a company that had a cafe attached to the plant so of course they had to have a system for dispensing good water. I drank from a glass.

If I were commuting to a job every day now, I would most probably invest in a stainless steel water bottle and fill it from my Brita pitcher at home.

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We give our children a small weekly allowance because we want them to learn some valuable lessons about money. Corporations provide them with goods and services, but they aren’t all that interested in teaching my children valuable lessons.

We do impose some limits on what our kids buy for a number of reasons such as safety and nutrition, but we try not to be so strict as to diminish the idea that the money is for their discretionary spending. They listen to me give a speech every time they come in the house with a plastic soft drink bottle. I am an accomplished public speaker, but they seem to see this as negative reinforcement nonetheless. They opt for glass bottles or cans more often than not.

Other than the plastic bottles, I mostly let things slide. There are a few things that bother me.

Kinder Surprises are my enemy #1 when it comes to junk food. Thankfully, my kids have outgrown them. Kinder makes a candy bar without the surprise. It comes in a plastic wrapper inside which there are two fingers of candy in their own individual plastic wrappers.

Individual serving cakes are another pet peeve. My teenage son considers one cake to be 1/2 a serving.

The brand name imported candy bars are bad value and they probably have a bigger environmental cost than the locally manufactured treats.

Giving the kids and allowance and having them be less environmentally responsible than me is a situation that I am going to just live with. If I felt like something had to be done, there are a few options.

I could spend some of my own money to stock the cupboards with fair trade organic chocolate bars in foil wrappers, home baked cakes and soft drinks in returnable bottles. I don’t know what the kids would buy if all their sugar cravings were being met in house.

I already make a point of providing a big cooked breakfast on a regular basis. French toast made from local bread and eggs comes plastic free. I make a topping from local seasonal fruit cooked in a pan with sugar that I buy by the kg without packaging. Sending the kids to school stuffed to the gills with carbs and protein might prevent the purchase of a few items of plastic packaged junk food.

A simple option to reduce the environmental impact of my kids’ allowance would be to reduce or eliminate the allowance itself. This would be a microcosm of what some people were saying about the economic crisis when it hit. Having less money to spend should always translate to less waste.

A very difficult option would be to dictate what the kids could and could not purchase. This would make allowance pointless. It wouldn’t make me very popular either.

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I am not an expert on this subject, please do yourself a favor and seek out people who are. I just wanted to point out that a great way to cut down on food packaging is to have the food sitting on the vine or under the ground just outside your backdoor.

I wrote about gardening with less plastic two summers ago. Not much has changed since then, apart from backyard gardening becoming super cool and important thanks to people like Michelle Obama.

I didn’t grow these tomatoes myself. The landlord that I had back in Gozo gave them to us and we dried them in the sun with lots of salt. They make great additions to salads or pizza.

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I just read a post on Eco Child’s Play about tests that show measurable amounts of BPA leaching from “BPA Free” baby bottles.

This is a frightening development for people who have been buying and using BPA Free plastic products. Recent studies has caused some concern that very low levels of this chemical can cause adverse effects in babies and young children. This is what caused consumers and in some cases governments to demand BPA free alternatives to polycarbonate. Breast feeding and/or glass baby bottles are worth considering. A lot of babies are going to grow up before there is a definitive study on whether there is an acceptable level of dietary BPA.

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Is burning plastic waste a viable solution?

I am putting this question out there, even though the idea doesn’t sit that well with me. This post sat as an unfinished draft from February until today.

Some scientists at Penn State have taken the idea and come up with some prototypes. These machines take non-recyclable plastic waste like plastic mulch film and irrigation tape and extrude and slice them into nuggets that can be added to the mix used at existing coal fired generators. They have also designed burners for applications like heating greenhouses.

Plastic was blended 5 and 10 percent by calorific content with coal. Dirty mulch film and drip irrigation tape from three States was made into Plastofuel™. It was then sliced into small pieces, then burned with the coal in a stoker simulator. Air emissions and burn quality were closely monitored. Test results were encouraging.

This idea is being put into practice to heat greenhouses in Pennsylvania. The research tested dioxin output from the process and it was well within EPA limits. I am concerned that any number of other toxins could be released into the air by this process.

I have had some time to think about this idea and I have thought of many reasons why it isn’t a good idea. The tidiest argument is that it’s application will not have any real impact on plastic litter in the environment. It will always be more cost effective to source agricultural plastic waste and pre-consumer waste than to collect or purchase actual litter.

Note: The emissions tests for this stuff was funded by the American Plastics Council, now called the American Chemistry Council.

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CBS took a moment away from reporting about how much media coverage Michael Jackson’s death is receiving to talk about bottled water and the people who are not in favor of it. They mention phthalates and they mention the price difference between bottle and tap, but they don’t mention plastic.

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Drinking water from plastic water bottles when your local tap water is safe and healthy is a big waste of money and resources.

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When the perfect box for my long imagined solar cooker project showed up on the curb across the street, I was happier than any normal 40 year old should be. After choosing a plan from SolarCooking.org and doing all the calculating and cutting and measuring, I realized that 40 year old men are not supplied with big plastic squeeze bottles of glue the way that 11 year old kids are. At least one plan mentioned wheat glue. Many of these plans are devised and written with the developing world in mind. I was surprised at how easy it was to cook up a batch of glue. The method that I used called for boiling the flour and water mixture for two minutes before removing from heat and mixing in sugar. There is a plan for a bigger batch of glue on ecochildsplay that does not involve boiling and has the addition of a little vinegar. It is a recipe that your kids could do with some assistance.

I used the entire batch of glue on my solar cooker, spreading it with a used toothbrush. I always keep old toothbrushes for those inevitable dirty jobs. I used to clean bicycle chains with them.

Wheat paste can be stored in a container for repeated use. I would advise against leaving it in the pot as that would make for some difficult scrubbing afterward.

If you try wheat glue and it turns out to be unsuitable for your desired application, you can also make glue using milk. Elmer’s Glue uses milk protein and you can replicate their product fairly easily.

Avoiding the consumption of plastic containers is only one reason to make your own glue. It can also save money. Making glue is a good kitchen ‘experiment’ for kids, with the advantage that you don’t have to eat it, although technically you could.

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I had a Twitter conversation with a pro-bottled water person today. She goes by Bottled Water Babe and her profile page includes a link to the site for a coalition formed in 2007 by the International Bottled Water Association.

One of the main points that she makes in her tweets is that many people who are shamed out of drinking bottled water are turning to soft drinks as an alternative. This assertion was pause for thought to say the least. I personally choose to avoid soft drinks except for rare occasions and I actively discourage my kids from drinking them. They still use some of their discretionary funds on the stuff. In a society like America, with its skew towards obesity, pushing people toward the HFCS is not a move in the right direction.

What remains to be seen is whether this argument is based on solid research. A reduction in the consumption of bottled water combined with an increase in soda sales is not evidence. A survey that asks questions about the reasons for beverage choices could be suggestively worded. You ask people if they are doing something out of concern for the environment and they are pretty likely to say yes.

Soft drinks are marketed so aggressively that it’s pretty hard to point at something like environmental concern about bottled water as influencing consumption.

Photo Credit: FoundPhotosLJ

The frustrating thing about the industry backlashes against environmental activism is that they often have a fundamental dishonesty that prevents dialog with those who hold an opposing view. It seems to me that they often word their press releases like they are helping to inform that general public while the real objective is to influence legislators. In a democracy, those legislators are interested in public opinion and the intellectually lazy ones can have their perceptions skewed by corporate lobbyists.

UPDATE: The source that Bottled Water Babe used to support her claim that people are switching from bottled water to bottled soft drinks is a Telegraph item that relies heavily on information and interpretation supplied by the National Hydration Council. This council was founded by the UKs three biggest water bottlers. As I suspected, they take dry numbers about sales trends for beverages and use them to support their viewpoint.

The Telegraph recently published a bizarrely upbeat report on an American woman killing an elephant in Zimbabwe. It was a perfect example of lazy journalism. The tone of the reporting mirrored the bravado and self promotion of the woman’s blog and talk about her on hunting forums.

This particular vanguard of old media seems to be like one of those poor albatross mothers who picks up any brightly colored garbage that is floating around and then regurgitates it for her chicks to swallow.

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