No plastic? Fantastic
Joy Persaud meets a rabbi who gave up plastic for a year — and thinks that others should take up the same challenge as a special year starts
EVERYONE’S AWARE now of the danger plastics pose to our environment.Rabbi Debbie YoungSomers decided togo a year without buying any. No stranger to sustainable living, she spent the last shmitta year, seven years ago (when halachah mandates land should lie fallow) striving not to shop, except for food and necessities such as shoes for daughter’s growing feet and maternity bras. With a friend, Young-Somers continued this for a second year, before resolving — there would be no more plastic.
“We decided in 2017 to quit plastic the next year. Then David Attenborough’s Blue Planet 2 started airing, so we totally hit the ground running. Everyone had become aware of the issues.”
“I began by avoiding all disposable things, especially packaging. Also, at Jewish community events, the amount of plastic cutlery and plates we go through is astonishing. Replacing them with biodegradable cardboard and wood may cost slightly more but the change to this world our children are about to inherit is immeasurable.”
The rise of packaging-free shops that emerged in tandem with Attenborough’s message “was amazing”, but Rabbi Young-Somers concedes it’s almost impossible to be completely plastic-free in London, especially if you’ve a young family.
“It’s not practical, if you need some pasta, to go 30 minutes up the road to the nearest packagingfree shop.”
Anotherhard fact is that goods bought in these shops tend to be pricier, meaning plastic-free isn’t an option for everyone.
But Rabbi Young-Somers realises it’s clear we must urgently change how we consume.
Awareness and attitudes to plastics are paramount, like knowing the time plastic takes to decompose — typically 1,000 years in landfill — to the microplastics in our food. “The challenge is: how do you mass-produce non-plastic products and packaging and make them affordable?” says Young-Somers.
The family’s loo paper is from Who Gives a Crap, which makes boxes of recycled paper-wrapped rolls. Vegetables are sourced from local companies and although YoungSomers is not in the catchment for Oddbox, she loves its ethos of selling veg deemed either surplus or too misshapen for supermarket shelves. She also now always carries a collapsible coffee cup, a set of bamboo cutlery and uses bamboo straws.
This Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of a new shmitta year. A good moment, says the rabbi, to start. “Ultimately, one person can’t effect change, but what we can do together is really impressive.”
“In shmitta in the Bible, the whole communitycame together, to prepare not to harvest the field. You had to act collectively to survive.”