I don't recall a particular moment where I consciously decided to join the (as I call it) #multipleR movement aka rethinking, refusing and ultimately reducing the amount of plastic items, especially single-use plastics, while trying to reuse and recycle the rest of them, in my daily life. Maybe it slowly crept upon me during my internship with Greenpop in Cape Town, where we had mandatory plastic-free office-lunches and started taking our actual mugs from the kitchen to the next coffee-shop to get our caffeine-fix. That was way before the newly designed re-usable cups emerged on the market, back then it was either single-use cups, mugs or thermos jugs. Now, you can basically get your coffee or tea in the most fashionable, biodegradable or recycled reusable coffee cups imaginable and the supply is sheer endless, what a time to be alive AND awake, without a guilty conscience! ;)
About 2.5 billion coffee cups are thrown away in the UK only, each year.
Packaging and bringing my lunch in reusable boxes, preserving jars or wrapping food in bee-wax wrappers, instead of styrofoam and aluminium foil, was probably the next step that followed. That was over four years ago, and at about the same time the first big headlines emerged about heavily plastic-polluted beaches and the great pacific garbage patch (if you haven't heard of it, click here, but make sure to sit down beforehand!).
Luckily some really inspiring innovators and entrepreneurs have been trying to fight the results of our reckless consumption of single-use plastic products (which is in larger parts to blame on the system we are living in, as it allows companies to produce and provide these items without paying a second thought to it and actually making a profit through it). However, I believe that it's important to focus on the good things in life, and that's why here is a short but pretty impressive list of people who got active and are driving the change by raising awareness for the importance of our marine ecosystems and the threat posed by plastic waste:
I mean, let's just think this through for a second, shall we?
Giving away plastic bags FOR FREE at the (grocery) stores? How can it be possible, that something like a plastic bag, that has to be harnessed, produced, printed and distributed comes without any costs for us consumers? But here we are, placing the already packaged food into even more plastic packaging, because we don't even think for one second about bringing our own bags. But why should we, when the supermarkets and almost every other shop on this planet have made it so very convenient for us to just take one of their's for free? Well, little did we know we'd be paying the (externalised) costs for those make-believe freebies with the health of our planet and its ecosystems. Something, which's worth can and should never be weighed up in monetary entities! Watch the video below for an explanation of how our linear economic system is using externalised costs (i.e. the suffering of many other people and living beings on this planet) in order to make products cheap for us consumers and our convenience:
Next thing we know are oceans where divers find more plastic than fish, wales washing up on shores with their bellies filled with trash, birds choking on the plastic that either them or the fish they caught have swallowed. Even worse, the latest article I read about the problem is explaining how fish have now changed their DNA, or better: the DNA of fish has been manipulated to change, because of the plastic in our oceans. Similar things are happening with us humans, as plasticisers can already be found in our systems, because of plastic bottles, the daily products we're using, but also because of the food we are eating, in this case: sea-food... just another reason to become a vegetarian hu?
"Contaminated fish and shellfish have been found everywhere from Europe, Canada and Brazil to the coast of mainland China– and plastic-eating fish are now showing up in supermarkets. The question is no longer: are we eating plastic in our seafood? What scientists are urgently trying to establish is just how bad for us that is. Another question we might ask: how did we get here?" - The Guardian
"A new study shows that plastic particles in water may end up inside fish brains. The plastic can cause brain damage, which is the likely cause of behavioural disorders observed in the fish." - Lund University
If you're interested in more scientific evidence, here's an article I've found about how plasticisers influence our endocrine system. Guys, am I the only one that's freaking out or why is nobody making a huge fuzz about stories like these in the news? Why is there no march for our lives because of the plastic that is slowly choking our planet and ultimately every inhabitant with it? I always thought there is such a thing as consumer protection? Oh but wait... you can make tons of money with plastic, can't you. That's why.
Now, if that makes you just as angry as me, and you know that it will take forever for the system that we're living in to change from the top downwards (politicians...eh), why not take action anyways and make sure that WE are the change we want to see in the world (#gandhiforlife). It starts with changing your mindset, becoming aware of the problem and rethinking your consumerism. With your new mindset, your actions will change as well: quitting plastic water bottles for instance is something everyone can easily do, if you're living in a country with good water supply mains (Germany in my case), then the easiest is to start drinking tap water. If you think it tastes lame, hey mix it up a lil' and add a lime or some ginger, it's better for you than Fanta or Coke anyways! Next action: bring your own bag when running errands. Ladies (and gents), there are super cool, foldable and tiny reusable bags which you can put in your Liebeskind, backpacks or gunny sacks and thus are ready to shop sustainably whenever! YAY, right?
With having some time on my hands and a newly-opened zero-waste shop just around the corner from where I live - I know that's a privilege not many of you have, but be patient, it's a growing movement - I have decided to challenge myself to a zero-waste March. The pictures above are some impressions of what our kitchen and my food hauls are looking like. Basically, I did not wan't to buy anything that was either wrapped in, or contained plastic in any form. Easier said than done, I know.
If you guys are interested in what you can do to quit single-use plastic in your life, a list I compiled with some useful tips and tricks will be uploaded here soon!
I am not saying that a little bit of an effort isn't needed for starters, it's just the same with every other lifestyle change. And why not even make this a hobby? Caring for your planet should be something we all should be doing anyhow, and maybe it get's easier when people start seeing it as a passion instead of something as a forced lifestyle change and "necessary evil". I reckon it is also more important to adopt certain habits of leading a more sustainable lifestyle, than to swap all products you are currently buying for (sometimes more expensive but more sustainable) eco-friendly products, as this still counts as consumerism in a way and can lead to devastating rebound effects - in short an error of reasoning where the demand or usage for/of a seemingly more eco-friendly product increases so drastically that the effects of this demand and usage turn out to be either just as destructive or even more harmful for the planet than the seemingly less eco-friendly product we had been using before; best example: electronic or hybrid cars (read more).
In the 1960s, one of my favourite German novelists, Max Frisch, wrote: "Are you sure that you are truly interested in the preservation of humanity, even if you and all your acquaintances aren’t anymore? Why? Bullet points suffice.”
And this is what I want to keep in mind at any time, it's not just about my life, or about the next generation, this is so much bigger than me. It's about humanity and all other life on this beautiful spaceship earth. But ultimately it comes down to your and my actions. It's always about our choices on how we decide to look at things, isn't it? Life is what you make it folks, let's make it (single-use) plastic free! :)
Xx