I am doing another experiment now that has been going on for about three weeks, which is my trash quest. I’m trying to account for every single piece of waste that I generate, and am conscious about every piece of waste I take on and take ownership of, and nothing is allowed to be thrown away.
I currently have a medium sized gift bag in my closet, full of miscellaneous plastic and other trash that can’t be recycled with our street recycling. Eventually, soon, I’m going to have to figure out what to do with that stuff.
There are lots of strange plastic items in there that aren’t #1 or #2, which are the only two plastics that our Nashville street recycling takes. So for everything else, I have to find something else to do with, which includes plastic wrap and plastic films.
Since I’ve started this experiment, I’ve quickly come to see plastic as an enemy. I don’t look at an empty bag of Cheetos in my driveway the same way. I don’t see everything in the store wrapped and encased in plastic in the same light as I did before. It’s not a natural thing. It’s extremely unnatural.
Plastic waste litters my neighborhood. When I first moved here I was shocked by the amount of plastic waste in our streets and yards. Parker and I filled up an entire trash bag just by walking the block and picking everything up.
The problem with this plastic waste is that it literally will last forever. You use it one time, to eat with, to carry your water, or some food, and then that’s it. It’s been used. And then it lasts forever.
We know that plastic is a problem and it’s bad for the Earth and even bad for human health, because of the chemicals that leach off the plastics, the endocrine disruptors, that cause cancer and infertility and human birth defects, etc. We also know the microplastics that are in our lungs and in our fat, and every part of our bodies. Turtles choking, rivers clogged, beaches trashed.
Yet, none of that combined information has lit the fire in me. So what did?
I read a story about a month ago now, and it hit me just right. This is what caused me to draw the line.
“Pregnant whale washes ashore in Italy with nearly 50 pounds of plastic in her stomach.”
-CBS News
That’s it guys. I’ve had enough.
This is a horrible crime against nature. We are starving whales and killing them with our waste. Reading that disturbed me and I’m still disturbed a month later.
Our obsession with plastic is literally filling the stomachs of whales with trash to the point that they cannot digest their food, and they starve to death.
It can’t be like this.
This is not working. We have to change.
HAKUMUSU 