On these gorgeous spring days, when you know the air temperature is 65 degrees in the morning, it is extremely hard to resist the urge to get outside and go for a walk. This morning my journey took me from School House along Pierpont Beach to the Mermaid Statue in Marina Park. I was amazed at how many pieces of plastic trash was along the shoreline, within 30 minutes I collect 67 pieces of large and small pieces of plastic.
The collection I was holding in my hand reminded me of a presentation that I attended at Patagonia with my friends last week. The organization www.5gyres.org made a very thought-provoking speech about our fascination and love affair with plastic. The biggest impact on me was a photograph that is on their website (under the “what’s happening now tab,” picture section, 14th photograph) is a photo of a medium to small fish fillet with a pile of small fragments of colorful objects. These are pieces of plastic from that fishes small stomach! This fish was caught by the crew of 5 Gyres while out in one of the Gyres and was about to be consumed when they decided to cut open the stomach of the fish to see what was inside. Some might say so “what’s the big deal?” well the big deal is plastic absorbed all the toxic chemicals we use on for our lawn care, fire-retardant, house hold cleaners and all the other nasty harmful toxin all over the world, which is now inside that food source, we call fish, which is consumed by us!
Is there a solution? Well maybe we can start by becoming aware of the food products, toys and all other products we purchase. Do we need to have a plastic bag for one item we had to purchase at a store? Do we need to buy that plastic toy for a child to play with for 10 minute, then to have it break? Maybe I am just procrastinating the large drawer of contacts that need to be entered into my computer, but I’m really trying to focus my energy towards purchasing food products that are in glass, metal and finding refillable stores.
Last week on my quest to a trying to be plastic free state of mind, a great blog with tips and ideas is www.myplasticfreelife.com I learned that you can take large mason jars to store that sell bulk items and have them filled. Because what is the use of buying in bulk besides it being A LOT cheaper and then using a plastic bag to carry it out of the store. So I took 5 large Mason jars that was left over from canning a bunch of pears, had the deli man measure the weight of a jar with the lid on it empty and write the weight on top of the jar lid. Afterward I headed over to the great bulk section of Lassen’s and filled them with pinto beans, corn kennels (pregnancy craving includes fresh popped popcorn), berry filled bars, animal crackers and quinoa. At the check out it took a few extra seconds but it was well worth the wait, I know I used 5 less plastic bags in the world. Another item I bought was organic milk in a glass jug. This was a first for me and I’m not a huge milk drinking person, but when I got home and realized it had a cream top, I was amazed that it actually tasted totally different that regular whole milk. For one it didn’t give me the weird after taste!
I hope you can get inspired to take a walk outside pick up trash that you might see on the ground and think about how you can eliminate one piece of plastic from you life. Whether checking into a local Community Supported Agriculture Box, taking a re-usable bag along with you to a store, checking out The Refill Shop in Ventura to refill your household beauty products, buying bulk food items or just becoming aware that children and adults like gifts but they don’t have to be new or cheap plastic.
