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If we stop buying plastic bottles and using plastic bags, at least we will feel better.
his tenure may be brief.
My New Year’s resolution was going to be not buying any plastic bottles in 2018. I think I can manage not to buy drinks and food in plastic bottles. After all, champagne comes in glass and chocolate comes in foil, so how difficult can it be? But the idea of grinding flower petals to scent my shampoo, or grating laundry soap and reheating it with distilled water to make dishwashing liquid reminds me – although no reminder is necessary – that life is short. Then there’s the fact that the common ingredients in shampoo and detergent are themselves sold in plastic bottles. Natch.
My husband is inclined to make the even more salient observation that my action will not make a blind bit of difference. Increasingly, though, I think spending is political. It matters where we spend or don’t spend our money.
Some people lament that the world is run by faceless global corporations, but customers lead the way. If we do not buy certain products, they disappear, so the choices we make as individuals matter. Which is a rather long way of saying that my resolution is to buy no food or drink in plastic bottles in 2018.
In addition, where convenience trumps conscience, I will limit as much as possible any other plastic-bottle purchases. New Year’s Eve has not arrived as I write this and today in the supermarket I passed a woman with 18 big bottles of Coca-Cola in her trolley. It does not make my own resolution futile, but it reminds me that if there are any benefits from it, they will be psychological rather than practical. I will not save the world, but I may feel better about it.
On the subject of making choices with environmental consequences, I was surprised when reading New Zealand news to see the fuss about plastic shopping bags. When I moved here to Maryland 18 months ago, it was to a regime with a five-cent charge for a plastic shopping bag. It incentivises customers to bring their own bags, but if you forget them, or want plastic bags, you can buy them. Or you can buy a reusable bag for about $5.
I buy reusable bags so often that if I cryogenically froze the cupboard by the front door, a few generations hence it would be a time capsule of how shoppers carted their groceries in the early 21st century – a must-see exhibit for another generation, I’m sure. But here’s the thing. Although it makes sense to reduce packaging, and consumption generally wherever we can, supermarkets are full of packaged products. Using fewer plastic bags than you need is not as hard as some people seem to think, but nor will it save the planet.
Each of us in the developed world is likely to be responsible for a lot more other environmental harm than merely that created by using plastic bags or solved by forgoing them.
I’ve always thought of supermarket bags as a clever invention. I do not look back fondly on a childhood where the bottom sometimes fell out of cardboard boxes that held the groceries, or they were in paper bags that got wet because no one had internal entry from their garage to their house. That development came later – part of a construction and demolition cycle that creates far more waste than a lifetime of plastic-bag usage ever will. But we should reduce waste where we can and, anyway, recyclable bags have prettier designs. Happy New Year.
Some people lament that the world is run by faceless global corporations, but customers lead the way.