Reduce, reuse, recycle, refuse
Looking through the Kiwi news this first week of 2018, I have been mulling over some possible new year resolutions in Godzone. For the sedentary among us, trying to walk more than 100 metres every day (fewer than 81 per cent of Kiwis do, according to one survey). For our fearless Silver Ferns, pushing for a pay hike to rival the All Blacks’ million-dollar salaries.
My resolution is to double down on a practice I’ve been working on for months now: minimising my use of single-use plastic. I’ve started avoiding those pesky takeaway knives and forks that collect at the back of my kitchen junk drawer; the coffee stirrers that perform no real function; and the omnipresent straws that come stuck into lidded water cups for my toddler and positioned elegantly in my margarita, two at a time.
For plastics, particularly single-use plastics, recycling isn’t always the answer. As good as you feel about separating out your plastics in your rubbish, plastic can be recycled a limited number of times. After that, it collects in landfills, and is scattered as trash on land and in the ocean, slowly degrading over hundreds of years. Coming out of the holiday season, recycling volume typically increases by 20 to 25 per cent, whether you’re in New Plymouth or New York.
In California, a movement to significantly limit single-use plastic is afoot. The Last Plastic Straw, a group founded by Jackie Nunez, began with an ‘‘aha’’ moment in 2011.
Nunez had just returned from a trip to Belize, where she was horrified while snorkelling to see a ‘‘river of trash’’ float past her. At a beachside bar near her home in in Santa Cruz, Nunez ordered a glass of water. As she looked out over the marine sanctuary in the Pacific Ocean stretched out before her, the glass arrived. It had a straw in it. It was her last plastic straw.
Not satisfied with changing her own behaviour, Nunez decided that there needed to be broader measures that could address behaviour on both the demand side (consumers of straws who take and use them without thinking) and the supply side (bars, stores, and restaurants that provide them without thinking).
Nunez understood that straws were the ‘‘gateway’’ to a larger behaviour pattern around single-use plastic. Once you start noticing straws as resource-intensive and unnecessary pollutants, you start seeing other single-use plastic. It is something that you ‘‘can’t unsee’’, she told me.
The Last Plastic Straw works with schoolchildren, encouraging them to visit local restaurants and cafes and make a pitch to make straws ‘‘upon request’’. These visits start the conversation – if straws can be on request, why can’t coffee cup lids?
The group also offers downloadable cards on its website, which patrons can print and then leave behind with their bill, suggesting that straws be offered only upon request. Nunez tells me that these cards have shown up in restaurants around the world.
The statistics on plastic pollution can be terrifying. A World Economic Forum report predicts that by 2050, there will be as much plastic by weight in the ocean as there are fish. It also says that 95 per cent of plastic produced globally is only used once.
The trick is not to get paralysed by the size of the problem, but to find a small way to shrink your plastic footprint. As Nunez suggested to me, single-use plastic could go the way of smoking, if there is sufficient individual, collective, and political will.
So I’m taking her advice. This year will be my year to reduce, reuse, recycle, and … refuse.