Plastic Freakout

As my poor suffering husband can tell you, lately I've become kind of obsessed with plastic. I admit it has been causing me a bit of a freakout. Here are some things I've been reading about my new least-favorite material: 1) Drinking and eating from plastic is potentially harmful; toxins which may be carcinogenic can leach from plastic into your food and drink, and of course then into you. 2) It's estimated that plastic should take about 1,000 years to biodegrade — 1,000 YEARS! Another way to think about it is that, since plastic has only been around for about 150 years, every piece of plastic that's ever been created is still with us. I find that kind of chilling. 3) Most plastic isn't recyclable. Even those types that are recyclable are much more difficult to recycle than other materials like glass and paper, and even the plastic recycling process itself can create harmful toxins.

So yeah, a bit of a plastic freakout chez Keenan. Which has resulted in Green change #13 (the first I've written about for MoGreenMo): We've stopped impulse plastic toy purchases for the kids, and are instead looking for ways to get them secondhand through eBay, freecycle, consignment shops, or friends and family.

It takes a bit more time and thought to search for items this way instead of just dropping them in the cart when we're already at Target or Walmart. But these days I can't stand the thought of having a new piece of plastic produced just for us. This change should save us some money, too.

I'd love tips here. What are you doing to avoid using plastic?

Comments

[Carol]

I don't have any original ideas to offer, but I do know of a product being promoted to trump the use of plastic water bottles. First came the bottled water craze, which allowed us all to purchase water for the same price as pop or other bottled treats. When it was determined those bottles could not be reused without risk, people turned to larger bottles made of a nontoxic plastic. Such bottles were designed to be filled with filtered water from home -- reducing the number of single-serving bottles in the landfill. Now green conscious folks are purchasing similar bottles made from alumninium. Aunt Janet gave them to everyone on her list for Christmas. I admit, I had never heard of them until then. Janet looked far and wide to find the aluminium bottles. Locating none, she finally had to order them on the internet.