Midnight Mutterings | Plastic

||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS BY JACKIE BATES |||

You may have noticed references to Plastic Free July in San Juan County. In case that has somehow escaped your attention, here’s a link to a recent article in theOrcasonian. Of course a third of July is already gone, but here are some un-original thoughts about plastic in our lives:

First, “plastic free” for any length of time? Well, good luck with that. Plastic is everywhere, in everything, including the fish we eat and our own bodies. There is a giant plastic island twice the size of Texas in the North Pacific Ocean, and at least four others nearly as large elsewhere. Google it if you are in the mood to be discouraged. Plastic free July in our county concentrates on our beaches and the water of the Salish Sea and encourages us to stop using one-use cups and bottles, for example. We can do that. We should do that. It’s the least we can do. It’s not too hard. OK. Let’s do it.

Then there are a few other things we can do that are not too hard as well. Most (and that’s just a guess) of us take reusable bags to the markets in Eastsound. And the markets provide us with paper grocery bags if we forget. However, once we are inside the stores, many, many of the items for sale are already wrapped in plastic. In addition, there are thinner plastic bags available to carry our fresh produce in, small plastic bags for bulk items like teas and spices, and larger bags for beans, flours, etc.

When we get home, well too many of those bags end up in the trash, and thus to landfills ‘somewhere else,’ where they will last a lot longer than we do. Nothing is quite as immortal as a plastic bag, or cup, or toy, or pen. OK, that’s not a proper use of the term, but you know what I mean.

On a recent trip off-island I went to one of the co-ops and did my shopping. (Yes, I know I should have shopped locally, but the markets would have been closed even if the ferry had been on time. (And I live at Obstruction Pass, which I sometimes call Tacoma.) I brought along, in addition to my grocery tote bags, a collection of small paper bags that originally contained mushrooms as well as some larger plastic bags from previous shopping trips and a few cloth bags I have collected over the years. I managed to buy a good number of bulk items without using additional new plastic bags from the markets. I also bought some liquids—dish soap, liquid hand soap, etc., using some empty plastic bottles that had previously contained similar products. It was a little more trouble, but not much. I might not have had the patience if I had three small children along with me and a dog waiting in the car. I don’t always do this as thoroughly as I did on this trip, or remember all the containers, but this shopping trip was the most successful I have ever had. And I did not buy the things already wrapped in plastic, however appealing. And, sure, I used gasoline, rode the ferry (though this trip was primarily for a medical appointment). And I wore clothes that were not ALL purchased from thrift stores.

And now I’m going to talk about laundry detergent. I have tried refilling old laundry detergent bottles from bulk sources, and have not been very successful. It’s a messy, lengthy process and I lose interest when my jug is about a third full and my pumping hand is sore. However, I have recently become aware of a new (to me, anyway) laundry detergent product and I actually bought it, tried it, and like it very much. It came to my attention via YouTube, where I squander too much of my rapidly disappearing future on a regular basis. This particular product is called TruEarth, but there are other brands.

All you have to do is look for TruEarth on Amazon. I had asked for it in mainland co-ops, but they don’t seem to stock TruEarth or other similar products, so I ordered it online directly from one of the ads. It arrived in a few days in a paper (not plastic lined) mailer envelope. No shipping charge. Inside was a lightweight cardboard envelope maybe six by eight inches, containing 16 strips, representing detergent for 32 loads of laundry. More if you tear the strips in fourths rather than halves, as I have done sometimes. I chose the ‘fragrance free,’ though there are several other choices available as well as a particular kind for babies. You put the strips in with your clothes in a top loader, or in the ‘drawer’ of a front loader and that’s about it. There’s not a lot of suds produced, but the laundry comes out looking and smelling clean. TruEarth is made in Canada, and the ads claim it’s hypoallergenic, phosphate and paraben-free and safe for septic systems.

One ad said that 700 MILLION laundry detergent jugs are added to the waste stream each year from the US alone, and only about 20% eventually get recycled (no matter how many we put in the recycling bin.) Then there’s the manufacturing of detergent jugs from fossil oil, the cost and effort of transporting heavy bottles, etc.

Yes, I know we are light years away from being ‘plastic free,’ no matter what month or week is proclaimed, and that one person’s pitiful efforts can’t change much of anything.

Still. Baby steps.