No Single-use Plastic Challenge Part2

To start the challenge, I cleaned up my garbage can in my room. And then we can see after two weeks what will be inside.

Precondition

But at first I have to say maybe my definition of single-use plastic is a little different from the others. The reason was written in the article of part 1, which also talks about the recycling process and carbon footprint.

Second, basically I might still use plastic but I try my best to reuse them.

And also because some paper package actually are combined with plastic, which increases the difficulty of recycling and decreases the quality of recycled materials. That means, if I only have two choices, composite material and pure plastic, I will choose plastic because it is easier to recycle. For sure I will try to find some other solution.

Process

I really want to talk about the moment I almost failed and the moment I did fail. But before that I still need to show my effort.

Bringing our own sustainable bottle and tableware everyday, I think this is actually the basic to be plasticfree. It can reduce the daily cost, so I suggest everyone to try it. That way, I don’t need to buy plastic bottled water and takeaway food. But to bring lunch everyday is a little bit of troublesome.

And the bottle is heavy and sometimes it might be too big to put in the bag. However, now there are many kinds of bottles that can fit our needs, we have no excuse for not bringing sustainable bottles with us.

It is important to maintain my teeth clean since I am wearing braces. I used flosser a lot because it is more convenient when I was not in my home. But actually using dental floss is better for health and also greener then flosser.

And also we can try to use handkerchiefs instead of tissue paper. Then it can reduce the waste of plastic packaging of the tissue.

Most food packaging are plastic for food safety reason, and it is really hard to avoid plastic in a supermarket. My strategy is

• Try to buy the package-free food
• Buy the food with biodegradable package
• Do not take-away
• Buy the food with sustainable package which can be reused in the future

They helped me go through the hard time without plastic. But I still failed. (wait what?)

Almost fail moment

At the beginning of the challenge, I forget it and I went to buy a cup of coffee in the vending machine at the school. But! Since my roommate, Pan, was also starting her taking-care-of-plant challenge, and the cup can be reused so it becomes like that:

And before the challenge started, my roommate and I bought a box of eggs with plastic packaging. Then it became like that:

I have to say that the egg box is really useful to grow seeds.

Failed moment

But when it comes to women problems, I can not think about reusing anymore.

Most of the pills are with plastic and so are sanitary cotton pads.

Sure I can stop taking pills during period (but that is really hurting.) and trying to find the replacement for sanitary cotton pads. But we can not ignore that it is still not friendly for women.

And also sometimes when I buy food with paper box, there is still plastic bag inside.

When I need to face the situation I mention in the precondition, paper box milk v.s. plastic bottle milk. I chose the plastic one. I know I should find some shop selling package-free milk or I shouldn’t drink milk. But it is also important to have empathy for people who love milk and don’t know this place very well so couldn’t find the place to buy milk without plastic, right?

After two weeks

So basically I failed on the challenge, but it is still meaningful to think about why and also think about what we designers can do on designing a product to reduce the waste of plastic and other materials.

When we design something, we can think more about:

• Using the same material
• Easy to divide different materials
• More sustainable
• Maybe packaging can have another function
• Try to use recycled materials more

And as consumers, we can set some standards for what we want to buy:

• All the materials can be recycled
• The material is biodegradable
• Support the product which has recycled materials
• Try to be package-free