Act as if plastic bags are covered in scratchy evil.
Today is Blog Action Day and I nearly missed it, what with my incessant car-pooling and dinner-cooking and dish-washing and child-dressing. Bloggers all over the world have focused on the environment today, posting great wonderful poetic essays about what we can all do to help the environment, to act–for once, for goodness’ sake–as if we are, in fact, the guardians of the future of this planet.
There are so many things we can do, but, truthfully, when there’s too much I could (and should) be doing, it ends up just being all overwhelming and I do nothing but eat Rice Krispie Squares in frustration, so I’m going to focus on just two: 1) Stop using plastic bags at the grocery store. 2) Stop buying bottled water. Fini. Stop. Halt. Cease.
Simple enough. Doesn’t take any research, complicated ceremonies, learning a new language, years of practice, or split squats with a 10-pound medicine ball. Just refuse those bags and carry your own water with you. Plastic bags just multiply in cabinets, anyway. You don’t need them. They are not free. They are evil.
- Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food. Turtles think the bags are jellyfish, their primary food source. Once swallowed, plastic bags choke animals or block their intestines, leading to an agonizing death.
- On land, many cows, goats and other animals suffer a similar fate to marine life when they accidentally ingest plastic bags while foraging for food.
- In a landfill, plastic bags take up to 1,000 years to degrade. As litter, they breakdown into tiny bits, contaminating our soil and water.
And there are problems with plastic bottles:
- Americans will buy an estimated 25 billion single-serving, plastic water bottles this year. Eight out of 10 (22 billion) will end up in a landfill.
- Bottled water is a rip off – consumers spend an estimate $7 billion on bottled water in U.S. each year. My lord, at the number of starving children that would feed.
- Worldwide 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year.
- 1.5 million barrels of oil is used annually to produce plastic water bottles alone – enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year.
Instead of adding to landfills and killing animals who ingest them by mistake, get yourself the best reusable bags on the planet and keep them in your car (they are seriously wonderful for groceries because they have a flat bottom and stand up when they are being packed as you’re checking out–this is important for the grocery checkers and contributes greatly to their willingness to humor you with your canvas bags). Carry them proudly into Piggly-Wiggly and walk out feeling good about yourself and about your small part.
Then get yourself a happy SIGG bottle for your water and bring your own. This one in purple is my favorite. And carry this beautiful bag (or two of them) all zippered up in its little case in your briefcase or purse for those little errands you run (again, I’m partial to the purple one). Make it a game–how long can you go without getting a plastic bag at any store? Just do it for 37 days and it will become a habit, but a good one, not a bad one like all those other ones involving Rice Krispie Squares and cheese grits.
Next year for Blog Action Day, we’ll work up to low-flow shower heads, recycled toilet paper, and veganism, but for now? Run, run like the wind from those plastic bags and plastic bottles. Evil. Scratchy. Covered.
