Plastic Free July Day 14

I was cleaning out my shed yesterday getting it ready to convert to a hen house.  During the process I removed enough tape and labels from cardboard boxes to fill a grocery bag.  I also found two small to medium size boxes with polystyrene foam peanuts (which I can now recycle).  Then I found a box containing plastic bags of all sizes and a plastic picnic plate.  The plate was a remnant of a Christmas gift someone had given me--goodies wrapped in cellophane on a blue plastic plate, and tied with plastic ribbon.

So much plastic tucked away--in storage, no less.  You might wonder why I would do that, but I have been recycling since the 1980s and it's become some kind of weird obsession to hang on to something until I find a way to recycle it.  Because I have seen recycling evolve (I remember when they didn't take batteries; and when they first started taking plastic bottles, but wouldn't take yogurt containers.)

If someone gives me a gift on a plastic plate, my gratitude comes into conflict with my heart sinking at the prospect of dealing with yet another piece of plastic.  And if I get overwhelmed and chuck it into the garbage, my guilt deals harshly with me as if I've committed mortal sin against Planet Earth, which truly I have - because I know better.  So I will find things tucked away every now and then.

This is a living example of the plastic problem in miniature.  Around the globe, the way to deal with trash is to "put it into storage" by burying it in the ground or dumping it in the ocean.  But it's still always there.  And it's growing.

Am I singing The Plastic Blues?  Well, maybe a little.

There really is only one solution.  And the answer isn't so much in the recycling of it, as it is in simply not creating it any more.

There is no need to create disposable items out of non degradable materials.  

That doesn't even make sense.

My solution is to stop allowing it in my life, while at the same time, trying to find an ethical, responsible way to get rid of the useless plastic items I still have.

Reduce Reuse Recycle was my mantra.  Now Plastic Free heads that list.