Quick Tips for Reducing Plastic

1. Always take your own bags with you when you go shopping

2. Use solid beauty products, e.g. deodorant and shampoo

3. Use soap instead of shower gel

4. Join a vegetable box scheme

5. Never buy prepared or ready meals, instead cook from scratch using the lovely vegetables from the veg box

6. Buy products in glass rather than plastic containers (e.g. like squash or tomato sauce); believe it or not, they usually taste better

7. Avoid plastic containers by buying butter instead of margarine and not buying food such as yogurt

8. Find a friendly local baker to get bread from

9. Source a local store health store that provides refills for household chemicals such as washing up liquid

10. Use laundry powder instead of a liquid detergent for your washing

Out with the Old?

This week Bron and I have consigned the following items to the local dump:
• One toaster (only toasts if I hold the bread down by hand)
• One microwave (paint peeling off and rust growing inside the oven)
• One vacuum cleaner (actually burst into flames when I turned it on; granted they were small flames, but it was still enough to make me run shrieking from the room)

I am a conundrum
The act of throwing these items away has brought to my attention that I’m a bit of a conundrum. Yes, me.

(A) I don’t like mess. Everything must have its proper home where it is tucked away out of sight when it’s not in use. If it has no use or aesthetical value anymore, then it shouldn’t be in my house.
(B) But I don’t like throwing things away that still have a function. It just feels wrong.

The toaster still worked even though I had to hold the bread down for it to toast, the microwave still did an excellent job regardless of the fact that it was possibly poisoning me in the process, and the vacuum looked on the outside as if it was perfectly fine, apart from the burning smell. Yet the act of throwing them into the big metal dumpster at the waste and recycling centre made me feel completely and utterly guilty, as if I was committing some hideous and unspeakable crime. Is this just me? Is it right to feel guilty?

What happened to ‘Make Do and Mend’?
I live in an inherently throwaway society. Everyone around me is throwing away the old and unwanted, replacing it with the new and shiny. It’s what the world of corporate marketing is telling me to do everywhere I look, and I often feel that goods today are not made to last – everything is designed to be used once, twice, three times, and then abandoned. Both the vacuum cleaner and the microwave were less than three years old, and I honestly believe they should have had a lot more life left in them. Perhaps that is why throwing them away felt so wrong.

My parents were both of the post war generation, and ‘make do and mend’ was the motto of their childhood. Although I’m from a different generation, I was still brought up within a similar concept, up to a point at least. Where did it all change, I wonder? Is it possible to get back to it? And how extreme will the triggering factor have to be?

The redeeming factor
The one thing that makes me feel better about throwing away these things is the fact that I have not replaced them with new ones. Not brand new ones, anyway. In this context I can almost convince myself that the manufacturers and marketing consultants have not won; I have not succumbed to their cunning salesmanship this time. This is thanks to my cousins, who are emigrating to the states and in the act of clearing out their house have donated their toaster, microwave, Dyson (ahhh, a Dyson!), bread maker, speaker system, garden spade, and several Xbox games to the worthy of cause of Bron and me. Ok, so I know that they’ll be buying new replacements for most of it when they reach their new home, but at least it wasn’t me who had to!

The 'I Deserve It' Feeling

A blog I like to read, 365 Days of Trash, recently pointed me towards this amusing article by the Onion, How Bad for the Environment can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?

I find this farcical approach to be incredibly revealing, not just about everyone else out there in the big wide western world, but also about myself.

"It's not like I don't care, because I do, and most of the time I don't even buy bottled water," thought Missouri school teacher Heather Delamere, the 450,000th caring and progressive individual to have done so that morning, and the 850,000th to have purchased the environmentally damaging vessel due to being thirsty, in a huge rush, and away from home. "It's really not worth beating myself up over."

How many times have I thought these exact same thoughts? Far too many times is the simple answer. Especially lately. It’s that, “Well I’m normally so good and I’ve had a really hard week and I haven’t had anything like this for ages so I really deserve it,” feeling. The real concern for me is the frequency that this has been popping into my mind of late. That plastic treat in my weekly shopping has become two treats, three, four; it’s almost as if I’m trying to buy plastic, not trying NOT to buy it. Oops.

There are two ways to look at it.

1. Everyone else out there is buying plastic and throwing it away, so what difference is it really going to make if I stop doing it? It’s like taking out one very small piece of straw from the middle of a haystack that’s the size of my house. So, why should I bother?

2. But if everyone, or even half of everyone, stopped buying plastic and throwing it away again, then that would make a very real difference. And someone has to start the ball rolling somewhere: there’s no reason why I can’t be that someone. Besides, I already know I’m not the only someone. Eventually – I hope – the snowball will take hold.

A Mobile Quandary, Part 3

I have committed an evil deed.

Over the last few weeks I have been conducting an internal argument with myself over the ethical and environmental considerations of replacing my mobile phone: a mobile quandary, and a mobile quandary, part two. Tragically, this weekend temptation got the better of me, and I am the guilty new owner of a posh touch screen phone. I know, I’m sorry, but it was just so much prettier than the eco version. I’m bad. Very bad.

Out with the Old
But what to do with my old phone now that it’s life with me is at an end? I don’t like throwing away what is essentially still a usable piece of technology, never mind the hideous impact such an act is likely to have on the environment.

Anybody who watches TV on a frequent basis is bound to have seen one of the many adverts that seem to be being constantly rolled out on how to exchange your old phone for money. I’ve got to admit this is tempting. Firstly, though, I don’t think any of the phones I’ve got kicking around in my drawers are going to be worth that much. Secondly, what do they do with them? I suppose they must reuse the parts somehow, otherwise their business wouldn’t exactly be a viable one. A second option could be to send the phone back to the original manufacturer, though the latter question applies here too. And – stingy as I am – I’m not too keen on the idea of enabling this wealthy multinational company to make even more money.

Mud Between Your Toes
No, I’ve decided: if I’m going to be bad and get a new phone, the least I can do is try to enable someone less well off than myself to benefit, rather than the other way around. So I’m going to send my old phone, and the others I’ve been saving up over the years, to the Eden Project. They’ve teamed up with an initiative called Corporate Mobile Recycling (CMR) to recycle phones and convert the money received for them into donations for environmental causes, specifically Mud Between Your Toes, an educational programme designed to get children out of their houses and exploring the natural environment. Actually, I’ve got a suspicion that this programme is run by my MA cohort, Philip Waters. Go Philip.

Here is what CMR actually do with the phones they receive. Though I wonder how I can get my hands on one of these reused phones? I don’t recall having ever seen them in the shops.

And if you’re not too sure about Mud Between Your Toes, there are plenty of other charities who would like to recycle your phone as well, from Oxfam to the Woodland trust.

I Recycle, Therefore I Am

These three, stackable, white plastic trays are our recycling corner. They are the only real evidence we have of our – or, at least, my – attempts to live a more eco lifestyle. In today’s western world, in the average household to recycle is to be all you can be to the environmental movement. I recycle, therefore I am.

The boxes sit, inert, on top of our small grey freezer in the kitchen corner, tucked away behind the door, hidden and yet visible for all to see. They are solid and they are stable, much like we expect our waste and our recycling collection services to be. They were bought from Argos, a store that is the epitome of warehouse catalogue shopping, a place I had never set foot in until I met and moved in with Bron. Cheap and cheerful, plastic central. No offence, Bron.

In our old home, we dreamed of these boxes. Of somewhere neat and tidy to put our bottles, paper, tin cans, and plastic trays. To keep this pile of rubbish, of unwanted material, out of sight and out of mind instead of thrown on the floor at the side of the sofa, waiting to be tripped over, and waiting to be sorted and tidied into rain-soaked plastic bags outside the back door. These boxes are our recycling salvation and I look upon them with pride.

Plastic bottles, lids, and odd bits and pieces are unceremoniously added to the top box on a daily basis, along with tin cans and, this week at least, foil trays emptied of Felix cat food. Carefully lifted down on a Tuesday evening, it is emptied into a large purple, plastic bag by Bron’s strong hands. The box returns, empty, to its lofty heights just below the kitchen ceiling, while the purple bag takes up its place on the front lawn, alongside a clear bag of paper and card, a green one of bottles, and the obligatory black bin bag. It’s always a surprise to see how few of our neighbours produce as many full and coloured bags as we do. Are they failing in their environmental duty? Can they just not be bothered to recycle? Or perhaps we are the failures. What if these neighbours, somehow, manage to produce less waste than us?

This is where my doubts kick in. How much of what I’m sending off with the recycling men actually gets recycled? The glass, the paper, the plastic, does it actually get to become something new, or is it going to wind up on the side of the road in a suburb of India? ‘Check with your local authority,’ packaging tells us now; and ‘All plastic is recyclable,’ yell the industry execs, but I can’t help but wonder how much of it really is in practical terms.

And so these three, stackable, white plastic trays link me to the products I put in them, to the food industry, the beauty industry, to consumer society. They link me to Bron, to the dustbin men, to the Council, to the rest of the country and the factories where my plastic goes to be sorted out, melted down, and made into new things.

They are the central causeway; they are the eye of the storm.

Totes and Tote Tags

‘Are we supposed to be keeping those?’ someone at work asks me, pointing to a little pot full of yellow and green plastic tags sitting on my desk.

‘No,’ I say, ‘But I’m trying to collect them.’

These tags are from the new boxes that the shop’s deliveries come in. Goodbye cardboard and tape, hello blue plastic totes.

Gritting my teeth, I prepare for the inevitable follow-up question: ‘Why?’

I’m going to be deliberately vague; I don’t feel like explaining myself in too much detail on this particular day. ‘Just to see how many I can get,’ I say.

Every tote has four tags. On average, we receive forty totes a day, five days a week; more at Christmas. That’s eight hundred little inch-long plastic tags a week. And there are three hundred stores in the company I work for. The math on that one is pretty scary: 240,000 each week. Or 12,480,000 in a year; twelve million, four hundred and eighty thousand. I can’t help but wonder where on earth they’re all going to go.

People put them in the bin or in the little collecting pot I’ve got going. They get spread across the floor, both in the stockroom and in the shop, where they get in the way of book trolleys, prams and pushchairs. Or they get thrown back into the bottom of the totes they’ve come from in the first place.

As the weeks go by the totes coming into the store develop a layer of plastic tags along the bottom, damaging the books that have been thrown in on top, sticking between the pages. I picture the day when I’ll open a tote to find it full of just these plastic tags, and not a book in sight.

What a strange system to have devised. The company’s new ‘Hub’ – a central warehouse where all publishers deliver orders to be sorted, repackaged and sent out to stores in one bulk delivery – is supposed to streamline the business. There is less cardboard coming into the store, sure, but that’s only because it all goes to the Hub instead. And it’s quite likely that there is less road mileage, as each publisher makes one delivery to the Hub rather than delivering direct to three hundred stores. That can only be a good thing. But all these plastic tags? What a classic example of corporate business failing to see the bigger picture.

A Mobile Quandary, part 2

I wrote a few weeks ago about my mobile quandary: my current mobile phone is on its last legs and, as hard as I try, I can’t envisage my life without a mobile phone these days. Especially given as my landline has, for no apparent reason, randomly decided to give up the ghost.

The Bamboo Alternative
I mentioned before that I didn’t think it was possible to get a phone that wasn’t plastic. It still isn’t possible for me to get one, but a little further research has revealed that such phones do exist, thanks to the wonder of bamboo. In fact, it seems that there are several different versions of bamboo phones out there in the internet ether. There is the wind-up bamboo phone which won the 2008 Greener Gadgets design competition, or the Chute Smartphone by Michael Laut. Problem is, there doesn’t seem to be any way to actually buy one of these, though I’m sure it would cost me a good chunk of my month’s rent even I could. But they’re very pretty and sound like they have excellent eco credentials, so if anyone knows how I can get my hands on one please do tell me.

Eco Options
It also turns out that Sony Ericksson are not the only phone manufacturers testing out the eco waters. Nokia, Samsung, and Motorola have all been up to it as well. I particularly recommend taking a look at the Nokia site, if only for an example of a beautiful piece of marketing and presentation. And it does the job: I want one of these phones. A pity that it’s several years old and now appears to be obsolete. At least, no network I can find lists this particular phone, the 3110 Evolve, as being available.

But…
What each of these phones have in common is the use of bioplastics, plastic engineered from plants, such as corn, rather than from petrochemicals. While this is generally a good thing, bioplastics have their own problems too, and are not as clear-cut environmentally friendly as many people would like to think. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the use of what would otherwise be a food crop for constructing technology. Is this ethical given the number of people in the world who don’t have enough to eat?

Either way, the question I asked before has changed slightly. If everyone has the capability to produce mobiles that are at least slightly more environmentally considerate – as a mobile phone goes, anyhow – then why not apply this technology to all phones?