Dialogue City Episode #011: Briana Loughlin and Plastic Free YYC
A conversation with Briana Loughlin of Plastic Free YYC. They are committed to eliminating plastic waste in Calgary and globally.
Plastic Savior or Waste?
Out of sight. Out of mind.
That’s been our mentality when it comes to dealing with our waste, especially plastics. Whether they be plastic bags, straws, or six-pack rings, we’ve often used these items for no more than 10 minutes of our entire total lifetime and then it gets thrown out. We feel empowered when we dispose of it or somehow recycle it, but are we really making any impact and is our constant desire to consume and throw out trash helping?
Dialogue City spoke with Briana Loughlin on her own journey to live a plastic-free lifestyle. As a documentary enthusiast, watching one particular documentary on where sea turtles mistaken plastic bags for jellyfish changed her perspective on plastics. She now leads a group called Plastic Free YYC in her determination to start educating people about their plastic footprint and to lead local initiatives to reduce our plastic consumption.
Her mission now includes contacting companies about their waste diversion strategies, asking for products that do not use plastic wrapping, and taking her purchasing power to groceries and local stores that try to reduce their plastic waste.
So if this idea is of importance to you, contact companies that you locally shop at and see what they are doing to reduce their waste footprint. Your feedback is also important. An example would be when a company asks if you could find everything that you were looking for, your answer could be a simple no because you wanted lettuce that did not have shrink wrap all over them.
We live in a world, as Briana puts it, where only 50 years ago could we go to a delicatessen and buy food without any of the plastic packaging today. Supermarkets have only been a recent invention of convenience but it has come at a big cost to the environment and wildlife.
So what are you doing to reduce your plastic footprint?
More Questions
We welcome your contributions to the discussion on these questions, in the comments below.
- How can you change the world? Is your activism or purpose motivated in emotion?
- How do you manage your own challenges when it comes to social activism, recognizing that activism is not easy for anyone?
- Do we see the world as a horrible place, or do we want to make it a better place?
- Are you afraid to ask that question that’s always been on your mind? How do you know that’s not also on everyone else’s mind?
- What are we doing to address environmental racism
Groups and resources mentioned
- Plastic Free YYC, on Facebook: @plasticfreeyyc and their website at http://www.plasticfreeyyc.com
- City of Calgary, read more about their recycling and composting program.
- Extended Producer Responsibility Canada
Further Reading
End Notes
We thank Briana (and Erin and Emilie) for taking the time to share their perspectives with us. You can connect with them on Facebook at Plastic Free YYC.
You can find this episode and more on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, Stitcher, and TuneIn. Reach us on Twitter, Facebook, and via email at dialoguecity@gmail.com.
Show Notes
- Montreal became the major city to ban plastic bags in Canada on January 1, 2018.
- Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada became the first city in the country to ban single-use plastic bags.
- China recently put new purity restrictions on recycled materials, affecting many municipalities in Canada. This is a response due to very low-quality recycled material and plastics being sent to China for processing from countries like Canada.
- Yes, there is a Canadian Plastic Bag Association. You can visit their website below and view their perspective on the issue.
- In Rwanda, plastic bags are as bad as drugs. You can be fined or even jailed for using, producing, or importing the product.
- Abandoned old wells are a major issue in Alberta when companies go bankrupt and are unable to pay for the clean-up costs associated with orphaned wells. The recent drop in oil prices over the past couple of years has exacerbated the problem.
- Extended producer responsibility (EPR) as defined in Wikipedia, is “ a strategy designed to promote the integration of environmental costs associated with goods throughout their life cycles into the market price of the products.” EPR is also known as extended producer accountability (EPA).
- A brewery has started using an edible form of the six-pack ring made of barley and wheat remnants.
- The European Union currently has a target that requires member states to have a recycling rate of 50% by 2020. The United Kingdom has opposed some of these targets.
- Microplastics as defined by Wikipedia “ are small plastic particles in the environment. While there is some contention over their size, the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration classifies microplastics as less than 5 mm in diameter. They come from a variety of sources, including cosmetics, clothing, and industrial processes.
- Companies like Lush and Aveda will take your containers, clean them, and recycle them for you.
- Aspergillus tubingensi has been discovered by scientists as a fungus that can thrive on plastics and break them down in a matter of weeks versus being left in the environment for years and decades.
- Mycelium is the fungus behind the possibility of being used as an alternative to polystyrene foam packaging that Ikea uses for much of its low-cost furniture sets.
- Thanks to two innovative individuals, you can prevent your clothing from polluting oceans and the environment from microfibre particles by washing your clothes in this laundry bag. It helps prevent these microfibres from breaking away from some of the clothes you wear and ending up in waterways.
- Yes, your waste can end up in areas like land-locked Alberta, Canada. Take a look at the photo and news article about an Alberta who can a fish trapped in a Powerade wrapper.
- This was the public art piece mentioned in the podcast regarding the dolphin statue with the six-pack ring over it. Quoted from the website: “ Initiated by the Plastic Pollution Coalition and developed by Vancouver-based ad agency Rethink, this stunt presented downtown commuters with visual protests against the mass consumption of single-use plastic.”
