A confusion of plastic.
Plastic waste is a problem.
We are not scientists in our family, or industrialists, or politicians, or activists. But we can say this with confidence that not many would disagree.
It is also not new news.
Fast-food corporations are discontinuing plastic straws, supermarkets are discontinuing plastic bags, multinationals are reducing micro-plastics in beauty products and clothing. Alternatives to plastic are increasingly a normal choice.
We should be optimistic about this. And we should all be very proud every time that we make a choice to consume a product more naked of plastic, and be proud every time that consumer pressure leads to a change in an industry towards less plastic.
In fact, the attitudinal change to single-use plastics, is a great example of how a large part of the population can make more effort, and how this can have a direct impact on our planet. The increasing rage against single-use plastics is a great example of how we are all connected, and how we can all make a difference.
However, if you scratch below the surface of these actions and their contribution to the plastic waste problem, and follow the thread of your consumption into plastic more generally, you quickly disappear into a worm hole, inside a rabbit hole, inside a supermassive black hole, that leads to an enormous sense of confusion and hopelessness about what impact we are actually having against this runaway juggernaut of a problem.
In fact, I would go as far to say that as a normal individual and family — figuring out what little changes we can make as individuals to plastic consumption seems like an exercise in futility, or worse a self-aggrandising and empty gesture to pat ourselves on the back. Even the sheer irony and naivety of typing this on plastic computer keys, shows the scale of what we face as a planet.
The reason for this deep sense of disillusion is because the more you read, the more that you realise that plastic seems to be in almost everything in one form or another, and that we have done this to ourselves.
It has made us wonder if the problem is perhaps not the substance, but the attitude.
Eliminating plastic completely to me feels almost the same as eliminating consumerism, or materialism. If we want to own things, then we are going to encounter plastic. If we want to wear things, then our cheapest and easiest clothing solutions right now use plastic. Plastic has been a background hum to our lives for decades. An invention, like many things from TNT to the Internet, that was invented for good and has many applications for good.
But one that as usual we humans have a knack of using for bad.
It makes me so confused. Are we fiddling around the edges with the odd plastic bag? Are we just allaying our guilt through the occasional ‘like’ on social media to post of a photogenic individual with a cardboard sign, astride a box of collected plastic waste on a picturesque beach.
Does it simply help us to justify the fact that much of the plastic we consume is because we want stuff, we don’t want to pay too much for it, and then when we’re done with it, we just want to throw it away.
Take our house for example. We’ve recently taken an inventory of our plastic use in the kitchen cupboards, and around the house. We walked around the different rooms, and questioned what we used, and why we used it. We scratched our heads and read packets and boxes, to see if there was something big we could figure out.
It was only one morning, that I tripped over an idea in the shower, metaphorically and literally tripping over the collection of plastic bottles and tubes that litters the cubicle floor.
I took a closer look, and one of our shower gels even contained gold. Actual gold.
Armed with this shame, that day we began to replace all our soaps and shampoos with solid bars.
In the bathroom, this means that two bars, replaces around 5–6 different plastic containers. Sourced as locally as we could, and manufactured as kindly as possible. Vegan, not wrapped in plastic and although seemingly a bit expensive, actually it turns out — per use good value.
We have also since gone further. Solid deodorants, shaving bars, toothpaste, are now widely available and are in the cabinet. It is relatively simple to have a plastic-free bathroom, or to choose products made or packaged more sustainably. There are recycling schemes such as TerraCycle. They are not perfect, but neither are we.
I have also reduced my consumption overall in the bathroom. I wash my hair perhaps once every few months, I don’t wear deodorant every day, and I rarely now wash my face. There are articles I have read that go into great detail about these practices, and I agree with them in the overwhelming conclusion. It hasn’t really made a difference. My hair looks the same, and I have lost no friends.
For fun, we then took all the waste packaging that was replaced, and made a space rocket. This made sure that at least for a time, we didn’t put our old plastic containers back into the system. In a perfect world, the plastic would not have existed in the first place, but that’s the things about making a new choice for the future. You can’t change the old ones in the past.
I also realise this is a very complex problem, and perhaps there are people reading this, and shouting apoplectically at the screen that what we have done is not enough. You are right.
But I think we have found a good place to start. A good place to notice what we consume, and make a change.
I also do not want to simplify the problem. I believe to put the production and instance of plastic waste in reverse, we have to not only fundamentally change our entire value system, we also have to have something akin to a new industrial or scientific revolution to figure out a useful and productive solution to all the plastic that exists already — in our homes, our oceans, our rubbish dumps.
To do this in a way that does not just create a self-perpetuating cycle of more, different, plastic waste, and instead reduces the amount of plastic in existence or at least draws a line under the amount of plastic in the World, is the point where my mind melts. Is a pair of shoes made out of plastic waste, just delaying what will be a different problem for our children? That instead of plastic bags in our oceans, our children are instead clearing up a mess of well-meaning recycled plastic products?
Despite this, what I do think is that whenever anyone figures out how to create useful items from our current plastic waste, we should support it. We should take inspiration from those amazing people who first scratched their heads at a plastic straw or water bottle, and imagined a water bottle or another durable item and jump on board. Individuals like this should be given the biggest platform of any platform, be given the biggest stage of any stage, and the biggest microphone, or any microphone, to shout it from.
Going a step further, once we have momentum, we should ban the production of new plastic entirely. Why not? There must be enough plastic in the world for dark dystopian corporations to create plastic mines with rich seams that will last us a very long time indeed.
If you are also reading this, and thinking that what we have done is nonsense, then again you are probably right. Plastic is a confusing, disillusioning and hypocritical symbol of our consumption behaviour. So instead of thinking of what we are not doing, consider this a piece of symbolism to contribute in a small way to a large and multi-generational call to action.
We are all connected, we all have ideas. We can do this together.
For an extended version of this post, please check out the Planetwise Pod!
