Family Mounds Up 250 Pounds of Plastic in a Year
All these “I did it for a year” people are starting to get to me.
They live the Bible for a year. They live on $1,500 for a year. They cook from the Julia Child cookbook for a year. Get ready to hear about one family, one year, two hundred fifty pounds of plastic (yes, this is where we start being REAL!).
The Garcias of Phoenix, Ariz. did everything they could to eliminate plastic from their lives. Jesse and Kim and their young kids skipped plastic bags at the supermarket and opted out on plastic water bottles.
Every piece of plastic that made their way into their house, they saved (where, I don’t know – I get irate just dealing with a month’s worth of yogurt cups and empty milk cartons waiting for the recycling truck to make its rounds). In the end, they had two hundred fifty pounds.
That’s my three-year-old times eight! That’s the more meat than you get from your average side of beef. It’s disgusting. But not all that surprising (we fill an average of five milk crates with plastic recyclables each month. What’s actually worst about all of this is that the Garcias were only able to recycle twenty five percent of the entire pile – the rest went into the landfill. And remember, this is a family trying to CUT BACK on plastics.
The problem is, not every “numbered” plastic is recycled in ever area. The “chasing arrows” at the bottom of a plastic container don’t necessarily mean they’re recyclable. And as the economy slumps, so does demand for recyclables – which means haulers don’t want to take them off your hands.
Which means the only option is to do what the Garcias have done from the beginning – attempt to reduce consumption. But is it feasible? What percentage does plastic represent in your garbage can or your recycling bin?
Image: WasteRec
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Great post, Jeanne! Just trying to open those plastic bubble packs that a new computer mouse, or other gadgets come in, makes me long for the old days of cardboard and cellophane.
We’re talking all things romance at the Dr. Romance blog.
Yikes! Our city only takes 1 and 2 plastic so I can’t imagine how much we must throw away, although we do try to avoid it. Especially 3,6 and 7. I guess you just do the best you can.
Why cant they put yogurt in paperboard containers like they used to? So many things could be packaged in glass too. I only buy salad dressing and mayonnaise in glass jars and that is hard to find. The fats and acid in the mayo can react with the plastic and cause leeching.
holy gazow. This kind of thing makes me want to hide under the bed and never come out, because I think about how much of our plastics aren’t recyclable, and then I think about trying to cut back to 250 pounds! Yeesh.