Setting my intentions for April: No disposable plastic

Why? I’ve made some conscious attempts to avoid single-use plastic for the last while – using tote bags, my glass coffee cup, Glastonbury Festival themed water bottle and carrying around tuppaware for the last 6 months. However, after watching the latest public service announcement from Jeff Bridges and the Plastic Pollution Coalition I was reminded just how much we do throw away and how much of the stuff I still consume. “When did we become a plastic society?”, Jeff ponders in his dulcit tones, “Every bit of plastic that has ever been made still exists.”

• The average American uses between 500-700 plastic bags each year
• Currently, about 40 billion plastic utensils are used just within the United States within a year, Worldwide, this becomes a figure at 16 times this magnitude.

What happens to the plastic we throw out? Watch the video below

But there is some good news; like the story of Naranyana Peesapaty of Bakeys who has developed the edible spoon to tackle the single-use cutlery industry. There’s still time to support his Kickstarter campaign here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1240116767/edible-cutlery-the-future-of-eco-friendly-utensils?ref=thanks_link

And creative displays from our future leaders like Melati and Isabel from The Green School Bali offer a healthy dose of inspiration too. 

So starting April 1st I will try my very darndest to avoid the most fleeting plastic in our lives – the plastics we use briefly and throw away without consideration; single use plastic for one month. Cold turkey.

I want to experience how difficult it is and to grow more aware of how invasive it is in our lives. Are we addicted to the stuff?

• No takeout
• No paper cups (with plastic coating)
• No plastic straws
• No plastic bags
• No plastic cutlery
• No plastic packaging including on my supermarket food – this will be tough
• Each day I fail I pledge to donate £2 to an effective project tackling this issue – I want to use effective altruism principles here so I need to do more research
• I may need to add to this list over the coming days as I get stuck in

Being currently based in Santa Monica will help I think, the local co-operative supermarket already caters for those bringing their own containers for pulses and dried goods. As an aside, I’ve already taken part in a few lunar intention setting ceremonies – this time round I may not have aligned with the lunar calendar but I’m hoping the Gregorian calendar can put me in good stead too. 🙂

Each day I’ll post a short update on how I am getting on, watch this space.

Or you could join in too.