This post is a follow up of A month without plastic. Since I wrote that, Chris Jeavans has been doing quite well for herself. She has learned some of the dynamics of the downsizing movement, which promotes reduction of all consumed items, and she is applying some of its rules. An example of a total-downsizer is this blog: No impact man. In this case plastic is not the only suspect and this New Yorker tries to reduce his enviromental impact to zero. Challenging, to say the least. Some of the key rules of downsizers are as follows:
- be aware of the impact of what you consumed
- be determined
- measure your progress
- tell others how to do it
All these steps taking by downsizers look very much like those taken by a person on diet, food diet I mean. Chris Jeavans has analysed new product types, like shoes, meat packaging and toiletries. But more importantly, she has found a lot of friends. As it turns out, she is not the first doing this at all. There are quite a few bloggers out there that are telling their impressions on giving up plastic. Have good look at all these links:
I’m sure there are more out there that I’m missing, so feel free to send me any suggestions.
It’s difficult to asses the magnitude of what seems to be a small part of a greater movement. However, the number of people doing it and telling their stories is enough to start convincing others to at least change some attitudes towards plastics. There is a clear educational purpose to these blogs, which aim not only at controlling their own impact on nature, but also at helping others to do it, by giving practical advice and loads of info on the lifecycle of plastics.
Another way to do this is to join a web community. For example, Celsias, a webpage where individuals, groups or companies can pledge to do almost any type of action to prevent climate change. This is true activism taken from the streets to the web, I recommend a look around at the projects or actions being taken. The ones I’ve found about related with plastics are the following:
Although the individuals writing the non-plastic blogs are not associated amongst themselves, there are common trends to their experiences. First, the rules are quite similar to those of Chris Jeavans’ blog, no new plastic should be consumed, old one can be used. Some of the blogs have finite lifes, but others have just reached the point of no return and wouldn’t bare to use a disposable plastic bag again.
Most of them started to cook up the idea of giving up plastic out of pure rage. For the guys writing leave only footprints it was the plastic bags spoiling the trees and for Beth Therry, writing fake plastic fish, it was the realisation of how much disposable plastic items she was throwing away. These two starting points already give an idea of the main enemy for the bloggers: disposable items and redundant packaging. I haven’t seen much reduction or criticism towards plastics used in electronics, for example, which are durable plastic goods. The most hated plastics are PVC and PS. The most single hated item is the disposable plastic bag, although superflous packaging irates activists the most. I think what Chris Jeavans says in her post Aisle be there about lemons exemplifies it quite well:
I doubt I will ever understand plastic-wrapped lemons for instance (didn’t nature do that job rather well?)
I have decided to discuss a bit about these blogs because I think they should be a warning to the plastic industry on the changing mindsets of consumers. Finally there seems to be more informed people that make terribly logical questions. Like why should they used just once an item that cost us so much in terms of resources, instead of changing to reusable alternatives. Or why, if there are some many alternatives, is plastic not recycled. Do we have to consume just because we can?
Big questions for me to answer. That’s why I have asked `the bloggers and a few European associations related with plastics to comment on it and I of course invite all of you to do the same.
