2. Paper or Plastic? How do one get their groceries from the store to their home without creating garbage? Colin’s French net bags What changes can we make to guide consumers to reusable bags?
5. If you eat fish, you eat plastic Six times more plastic by weight than biological matter like plankton. People Eat Fish That Eat Fish That Eat Plastic PCB, DDT and other carcinogens are absorbed by the fish.
Colin has a pretty vivid vision of what he thinks No Impact shopping is going to be, down to the French shopping bag made of netting.Colin mentions that he has bought canvas shopping bags in the past but they're sitting in the back of some closet. We trash 4-5 trillion plastic bags per year.Only 1 percent of the bags are recycled and 1 percent of the bags we throw away ending up blowing out of trash depositories.Many countries already tax if you use plastic bags. Here in the US we’re a little behind but there are some changes in the works: San Fran hasplaced a ban on plastic bags and Washington DC recently implemented a tax for plastic bag use at a rate of .05 per bag.
The remains of a Laysan Albatross chick which was fed plastic by its parents resulting in death.
Plastic isn't biodegradable —the microbes that break down other substances don't recognize plastic as food, leaving it to float there forever. Sunlight does eventually "photodegrade" the plastic,reducing it to smaller and smaller pieces, but that just makes matters worse. The plastic still never goes away; it just becomes microscopic and is eaten by tiny marine organisms, entering the food chain.It seems like such an easy problem to solve. Plastic bags are made of materials that are designed to be used for a very short period of time but last forever.
Another thing he realizes is if he is trying to produce no garbage, he can’t buy prepackaged grocery food. He'll need to buy unpackaged bulk bin foods. But how do you get unpackaged food from the store to your house? Colin constantly needs to step back and adjust his reality. Processes that he has spent a lifetime becoming comfortable with are no longer part of the picture. He finally realizes that he can use glass jars. Sure, they're built to handle unpackaged foods but he runs into another setback, he calls it a crisis of confidence. We discussed this in our message board discussion a little. How do we handle setbacks?
People will need to show superhuman restraint to move from this consumerist society to one of self sustainability. Are people too selfish?Nobody likes trashing the planet. It’s not really the fact that we 'want', it’s how we deliver goods. Colin craving a Pizza wasnt the problem, it was the disposable paper plate that he would use for a few minutes and throw away.No single person created the tidal wave of trash. It’s not a total flaw in human nature.KAB – Corporate greed. In order to distract from the “supertoxic destruction of the natural world”, the companies make people feel guilty with marketing. It’s the litterbugs fault.The world used to work differently when it came to trash. Industrialism pushed manufactures from using recycled goods like they had in the past to using easier to produce material. Now trash is unidirection, operating in a single direction. From manufacture to consumer to landfill and on to the incinerator. Affirmation that creating this much trash isnt a result of our nature, its the result of the corporate habits that the earth can no longer sustain. Germany has a policy that requires producers to be physically or financially responsible for their products, that includes packaging. If its not human nature, its our entire manufacturing and distribution system. That just makes it harder to fix.Whats the point?Hindu poem “To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive; neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction”. Work done without expectations, motives, or thinking about its outcomes tends to purify one's mind. Story of Nachshon, he didnt know how he was going to cross the Red Sea. But he had the courage and determination and he just put one foot in front of the other and just when it looked like an impossible task, water up to the nose, the Red Sea parted. Great success! The whole project isnt about planning and wondering if he can make a difference, its about stumbling forward and actually beginning to make a difference. Given all that, does it matter who created the problem, the question is he willing to try and make a difference.
