Time to Kick the Plastic Habit

Summer is the time for picnics, outdoor drinks, backyard and beach-side BBQs. And if we're not careful that can mean that all these festivities come with a plastic footprint — cups, plates, utensils, drink bottles, food packaging, shopping bags, and more. And while all those plastic remains may signify a good time, they're a danger to the environment, especially to marine life.

By now you've likely heard of the "Great Garbage Patch," the Pacific plastic gyre that writers for The Independent likened to a "plastic soup" that may be "twice the size of the continental United States."  Recently, scientists also discovered a swirling vortex of plastic in a remote part of the Atlantic Ocean.

Just this week, Stiv Wilson estimated that there is about up 315 billion pounds of small plastic pieces in the Atlantic ocean. To clean all that up, he figures we'd need 630 supertankers packed to the brim, at a cost of about $56,000 a day for each boat. So, all those free plastic shopping bags and utensils that restaurants give away? Turns out they're not much of a bargain after all. The crazy irony of our disposable, consumer culture is that the things we're likely to use for the shortest amount of time (sometimes even minutes or seconds) are designed out of a material that hangs around for thousands of years.

The organization 5 Gyres (which studies the five known major plastic gyres in our oceans) estimates that of all the plastic we produce, we only recover five percent of it. Another 50 percent goes to landfills, where it will take lifetimes to break down, and the rest goes into the environment, where much of it eventually ends up in our oceans.

The heavier plastic waste sinks to the sea floor, but the light stuff accumulates near the surface where it can be ingested by marine life and birds. 5 Gyres reports that 44 percent of seabirds, 22 percent of cetaceans, and a growing number of fish species are being found with plastic either in or around their bodies.

So what do we do about this? First, let's start off by figuring out how much disposable stuff we actually use in a single day that we can replace. For example, not eating at any place that packages take-out in plastic containers, or letting restaurants know you don't need disposable utensils. You can also reduce plastic waste by carrying reusable drink bottles, coffee cups, and shopping bags. And of course, recycle any plastics that you may find laying around.

Kim Eckart wrote recently for Yes! Magazine about alternatives to plastic sandwich bags, recommending the company reusablebags.com for eco-friendly containers, dishes, utensils, bags, and other items you may need. And rethinking plastic doesn't have to mean simply buying more stuff made out of something different. It may simply mean just buying less stuff, eating out less, cooking at home more, and choosing bulk and fresh items over packaged stuff. All the things that will be better for you are better for the environment and our friends in the oceans, too.

Photo credit: angrysunbird