A war on plastic war

Jennifer Bleby - 27 Aug 18

Since I started really thinking about the amount of plastic we use, I can’t stop seeing it all around me.   It’s everywhere and in everything.  Even in your bloody cup of tea! The silent assassin has infiltrated our lives more stealthily than a snake through the grass and blindsided everybody.   Go to your local supermarket and really look at the amount of plastic used in packaging.  We’re surrounded!

It’s in the bathroom in my toothbrush, dental floss, shampoo and conditioner bottles, hand soap dispenser, moisturiser, my make up bag!  In the kitchen in pretty much everything but the kitchen sink.  The pen i’m writing my notes with.   My clothes. Our son’s toys, and drinking bottle not to mention wipes and nappies that will likely still be in existence after his great grand-kids have passed! The realisation that every single piece of plastic I have ever used and thrown away is still out there somewhere horrifies me.  Whether it’s still in it’s original form, or as a million specks of micro plastic floating through the ocean or (best case scenario) having been recycled once or a few times over and now biding it’s time and gathering dust in someone else’s garage.  I set out to try to reduce the amount of plastic we consume in our house, especially single use plastic, but I’ve realised it’s very much easier said than done.   Finding alternatives is going to challenging and costly and as a mum on mat leave, we are very much on a budget.

Why is plastic the enemy?  Because it’s indestructible.  What’s worse is that it was created by man to be so, and at the same time being hailed as ‘disposable’ because it was cheap to manufacture.  We were all fooled.  How can anything indestructible be disposable?  While we are now recycling a lot of our household waste, there’s still an abundance that can’t be/is ‘too difficult’ or facilities don’t exist in our area for things to be recycled.  New plastic is still being made and it is very much a serious problem for our planet.  Humans are still ‘disposing’ of this ‘indestructible’ product by throwing it on our streets, into our oceans and down our toilets without a care in the world of it’s next destination.  Our wildlife are getting caught in it and our birds and marine life are mistakenly eating it to the point of starvation.  Once they die and decompose the plastic will live on and kill another.  It’s production contributes to global warming, killing off our corals which have a whole eco-system of their own which are dying as a result.

Plastic is our nemesis and each and every one of us needs to form an army.  We also need a strategy.  I’m starting my own:-

• The plastic that I already own and serves a purpose I will hold to on for as long as possible before attempting to recycle or donate it.
• Once those have been used up in our house I will endeavour to replace them with environmentally friendly alternatives or try to live without them.
• As money is an issue, I will explore comparable alternatives.  Having said that, I have always valued quality over quantity, and will make do with less to have better.
• If there are plastics which we absolutely can’t live without, I will look consider second hand and/or I will question companies that are using unnecessary plastic to see if they can consider alternatives.
• I will see what I can do to bring changes in our area for a greener and cleaner community.
• I will share my efforts in the hope others will do the same (while trying not to be a bore!) and learn from the many people who have done far more than me already to try to combat plastic on social media.

I believe that we can turn things around if we make drastic changes to how we live our lives now.  I owe it to my son to bring him up caring about these issues and our planet.  After all it is his generation that will be left with the responsibility of repairing the damage ours has done.

So i’m declaring my own war on plastic and, in the famous words of the great Winston Churchill “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Jennifer Bleby

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