How to reduce single-use plastic without government bans
It’s high time we start associating using plastic with ‘being plastic’.
Single-use plastic consumption by the people of our generation is one of the most privileged ways of showing how we don’t give two effs about this planet or our future generations.
In case you didn’t know already, let me educate you — Every single piece of plastic ever made still exists on this planet. That’s right. Every. Single. Piece.
Plastic is expected to take 300–400 years to degrade naturally. But that’s basically just an educated guess because it hasn’t been 300 years since plastic was even invented.
Please pause to think about that for a second. Every plastic fork you’ve eaten a takeout meal with still exists. Every plastic bag that the takeout meal came in still exists. The plastic box that the food came in exists. Even if you don’t see it, it does exist. Somewhere, deep down in some ocean with all the sea animals, it does exist.
Every tampon that you’ve used still exists. Every plastic tag that you’ve pulled out of your shopping spree still exists. Every exhausted shampoo bottle likely still exists.
And now multiply all that with every single human being alive. 7.6 billion. I’m sure you don’t need my help to imagine how much trash we’ve created.
And if you’re thinking — “Relax! A lot of plastic gets recycled,” think again.
Don’t get me wrong, using plastic isn’t always bad. Plastic is a part of many appliances, electronics, and vehicles, and we can likely not go back to a time that does not use plastic at all. We need to continue using the more “heavy-duty” kind of plastic to continue living the lifestyle that we do today. It’s the single-use plastic that we want to eliminate the usage of.
And even though it seems like we may be starting to actually care about the problem and acknowledging the irresponsibility of it all, the fact remains that we don’t. To be honest, I don’t think this is on individuals. It’s not like — If I, at a unit level, decide to stop buying products that heavily use plastic, businesses, supermarkets, and corporations will stop selling them.
No.
I can’t do jack**** at an individual level (even though every big company will tell you otherwise). I’m highly dependent on stores like Costco and Amazon. I’m highly dependent on local businesses, grocery stores, and restaurants around me.
As an individual, I will need to buy that box of green tea, or get the occasional take-out while miserably dealing with being handed a plastic bag with my food in plastic boxes, and a plastic spoon and plastic fork packaged separately in small plastic wrappers (which I won’t even use!).
I’m sorry but all those articles on the internet that expect me to not order food or buy pants online are asking individuals at the ground level to take action. I honestly do not see that scaling until a community at large decide to abandon companies that package their products in single-use plastic. In short, that’s just not going to happen. The articles could’ve just said “shrug and walk away,” and that would’ve saved 7 minutes of my time.
There are ways that supermarketes, restaurants, and corporations can stop using plastic though. In this article, I’m going to maintain a running list of ways in which businesses, restaurants, and large corporations can reduce their plastic usage. It’s not exhaustive, but we’ll slowly get there.
Supermarkets/ Wholesale markets
- Stores like Costco sell plastic spoons, forks, and knives in bulk to customers. If they provided an option for buying wooden dinnerware, I’m positive many people like me who are environmentally conscious would not mind putting in a few extra dollars for them
- Disposable cups, bowls, plates can all be made from dried leaves. People in India have been serving food in plates and bowls made out of leaves for many many years. It’s easily disposable and can be composted. This is another option for stores to add. I absolutely would not mind buying these. Of course, paper plates work well too, and are a great alternative to plastic.
Here’s a picture of bowls made from leaves:
3. Stop selling plastic covered in plastic in 1000 count containers! I mean, WHY DO THIS?
And why sell tea bags in a box with every individual tea bag wrapped in a plastic sachet? Isn’t that just shamefully wasteful?
4. Stop selling cling wrap. Sell silicone food wrap, which is much nicer to the environment and doesn’t get stuck in the throats of birds and animals.
Restaurants
- Restaurants can make a great deal of difference if they opted to not buy and package food in plastic containers. Most people in these Covid times get takeout and eat off of the plastic containers at home. That’s likely the only time that these containers are used. Then we dispose of them and they exist forever (apologies for repeating this but it blows my mind)! If restaurants can give us the OPTION of packaging our takeout using paper containers, paper cups, wooden forks, and paper bags, I’m sure there will be buyers with a conscience who will willingly pay an extra $5 to receive their takeout like that.
- Stop buying plastic forks covered in plastic covers. Even if it gets too expensive to invest in wooden forks, at least be mindful enough to just buy a plastic fork and cover it with a tissue or a paper napkin?
- Do you really NEED to put all your takeout in single-use plastic bags? Can you use paper bags?
This is going to be a growing list. Feel free to message me with more suggestions in the comments.
P.S — Netflix’s show called History 101 on Plastics inspired me to write this post. Check it out, it’s very informative and drives down the message of why we need to ACT NOW very well.
