Plastic Bottles, 2007. by Chris Jordan
Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles: the number used in the US every five minutes.

As our “Plastic Free July” (PFJ) experiment continues, we have passed through the trough of disillusionment and are now on the upswing of more realistic hopes coupled with some renewed enthusiasm for the task at hand. Our plastic recycling bin although not in as good  shape as we’d hoped, is much improved over earlier months.  Most of the contents are  a result of earlier purchases being used up and also from items left behind by visitors (more on that later).

We were starting to learn to live without purchasing some things that we just couldn’t find in any non-plastic packaged form, then it became apparent that some of those food items could be made at home from raw ingredients that weren’t so heavily packaged. A simple example of this is with pizza’s which the kids love (and the parents love even more). Premade, frozen pizzas tend to come on a styrofoam or cardboard base, wrapped in plastic and then in an outer cardboard box. Making your own pizza base is quite manageable and choosing your own toppings is a bonus. Those worked out well and the kids loved doing them.  We tried this base recipe.

Homemade Yogurt

A less obvious example is yoghurt – which tends to be sold in plastic pots. We had resorted to buying the very expensive “gourmet” yoghurts in little glass jars, but, it turns out that yoghurt is quite easy to make in volume while getting to add your own preferred flavour.

A friend came to visit one afternoon during the week and brought some fruit for a picnic with the kids. The fruit came wrapped in LOTS of plastic and so during the ensuing conversation about whether she might perhaps take her packaging home with her instead of adding it to our PFJ pile, it became clear that she thought what we were trying to do was somewhat pointless in the face of so much packaging in the world anyway.

Another friend who was leaving for a holiday trip, wanted to give away their left over fresh food instead of discarding it. So we said yes, but of course that meant taking on the plastic packaging too – it more than doubled our plastic waste to date (by mid July) in one go.

The sheer futility of the cause is certainly one to ponder…some figures say that 9 million tonnes of plastic find their way into our oceans EVERY DAY! Or that closer to home, Ireland is generating over 140,000 tonnes of plastic waste annually, that 50% of will go into a field (also known as a landfill) and will take 200+ years to break down releasing harmful by-products. The featured image above from artist Chris Jordan aims to help to convey one of these staggering metrics.

According to PlasticsEurope, the European trade association for plastics manufacturers, 265m tonnes of plastic are produced globally each year (2011 figures). In the UK, about two thirds of this is for packaging; globally, this translates to 170m tonnes of plastic largely created to be disposed of after one use.  (Ref The Guardian newspaper). That’s MILLIONS of tonnes….per year…hard to comprehend.

Even scarier aspects of this hidden problem come to light when one goes digging: for example, the use of microbeads of plastic in body products (scrubs, shampoos and even some toothpaste). These plastic beads are too small to be filtered from water streams and so are finding their way into all water systems and then into our food chain. Look for “polyethylene” in the ingredients.

In 2002, the then minister for the environment took the brave stand against the use of plastic bags for grocery packaging by introducing a levy to curtail their pervasive use. Ours was the first national government to do so. It seems that in the aftermath of this change, there was universal support and everyone though that in hindsight this was the right thing to do. We all understood the benefits of trying to tackle a very obvious waste problem and it has to be said that the solution in this case was somewhat inconvenient. Many other governments have since followed along with some choosing to go even further and ban the use of plastic bags. Remember when we all though smoking in cinemas, airplanes and even hospitals was acceptable? That is until we realized it wasn’t and that we could change it!

Societal attitudes can change quickly when the problem and solution path are presented well. Since we made that excellent change to the use of plastic bags in 2002, the amount of plastic packaging from other sources in Ireland has surged to the point where we have long since overcome those earlier gains, but of course this problem is more hidden from most of us as thankfully, we are a cleaner society now than we used to be and we don’t see as much discarded plastic waste around.

some unwanted pens

It’s still piling up somewhere though and we should be under no illusions that its being dealt with in a sustainable way. The best solution that exists now and is accessible to everyone is to try to reduce it at the source.  We realized that this is the important point: the private buyer has the most power.

Just as I was finishing this entry, a well-intentioned work colleague dropped this on my desk: 20 promotional plastic pens in a plastic bag that “would only be thrown away if someone didn’t use them”.

I sat looking at them for while…feeling sad.

We have a long way to go but this is something we can all help with.

Trying to avoid buying plastic for the month of July is coming with its daily challenges as we use up household things that happen to come in plastic containers, and then realise that we can’t simply run out and buy more of the same. It’s an interesting process – self imposing a new discipline on oneself that creates some difficulties until you remind yourself of why you’re doing it in the first place and renew that conviction to find another way.

We share the washing up in our house and so it was a lottery as to who would use the last of the washing up liquid and who would then be faced with figuring out the replenishment plan. We ran out on day 2, a Saturday, and so Mrs Makedo had the pleasure of tackling Sunday night’s pile of dishes with only our trusty (non-plastic) loofah sponge, but with no suds to help.  We had to wait until Mr Makedo went to Cork Monday morning, when he could stop into the Quay Coop to refill of “Ecover” washing-up liquid (Similarly for washing machine detergent by the way). Problem solved and another plastic bottle in the world avoided.

We are learning that running a home without bringing in plastic is challenging for sure, as plastic is by far the most pervasive packaging material in our lives. The chart shown (courtesy- Google) gives an indication of the relative size of different plastic waste streams in the U.S.

Unusual items will catch you out – for example, buying a Sunday paper meant that we couldn’t pick from the ones with the plastic wrapped magazines inside. Surely someone could figure a way to secure all the pieces of the Sunday Times together without having to wrap them in a plastic bag? That’s a lot of waste plastic every Sunday for little utility gain it seems, but as the marketers understand, it does give the feel of a quality product for some reason which may be why it’s done that way.

As a treat for our two girls, we gave them some Kinder chocolate eggs which a friend brought on a recent visit. Somehow forgetting they had stuff inside, we had some laugh when the  plastic toys popped out.  It was only day 3 and we were already getting caught out in so many places. Maybe the cute plastic toy will stay in use for the month of July so we don’t have to add it to our tally.

Later this week, having learned from our first mistakes, another treat for the kids took the form of a yoghurt in a glass jar which went down well and left behind a nice glass jar to be reused again.

We were also at a summer party at someone’s house over the weekend and as there were a lot of adults and kids to feed, the plastic knives, forks and cups were in circulation. It was a little disheartening until we saw them all being collected by our excellent hosts, in order to be washed and reused again at the next party.

We are compiling our list of sources for plastic free household options, and will post that shortly, to be updated as we go through the month.

In case you needed more data to inspire you, here are some rather disturbing facts about plastic waste: http://ecowatch.com/2014/04/07/22-facts-plastic-pollution-10-things-can-do-about-it/

• Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.
• 50 percent of the plastic we use, we use just once and throw away.
• Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the earth four times.
• We currently recover only five percent of the plastics we produce