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I just read an article in The Guardian called, The great escape: the bath toys that swam the Pacific, about the 28,800 bath toys lost at sea in 1992.  The article is an edited excerpt from the book, Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea, by Donovan Hohn.

The book looks like it’d be a good read; it sounds like the author went on quite an adventure.  Mr. Hohn said that he just wanted to find out where the ducks had gone, and how they got there.

His take on what he discovers about plastic is well-spoken:

What’s most nefarious about plastic is the way it pretends to deny the laws of matter, as if something could be made from nothing; the way it is intended to be thrown away but chemically engineered to last.

We have been conned.  We all know plastic is made to last, and at the same time we are told it is okay to throw away.  We are told recycling works.  But, it doesn’t work.

By offering the false promise of disposability, of consumption without cost, it has helped create a culture of wasteful make-believe, an economy of forgetting.

Make-believe.  We do not want to admit that our way of life is unsustainable.  Consumption without cost.  That is irresponsible.  How easy for us to sweep what we wish to ignore under the carpet.  Or just let it wash out to sea.

Never mind that only 5% of plastics actually ends up getting recycled.

Never mind that the plastics industry stamps those little triangles of chasing arrows into plastics for which no viable recycling method exists.

Never mind that plastics consume 400m tons of oil and gas every year and that oil and gas will in the not-too-distant future run out.

Never mind that so-called green plastics made of biochemicals release greenhouse gases when they break down.

Those innocuous, happy, little yellow ducks went floating off across the ocean to become a scourge of the earth…

Thanks for reading.

Responsibility in not convenient — it’s necessary.

Rethink.  Refuse.  Reduce.  Reuse.  Reimagine.

Love.

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The title is from, The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss.  I saw it on the blog called, “Vermont Litter With a Story to Tell.”  His mission is to promote a culture that is intolerant of trash.

I thought that I would share that blog with you.  It is from a Vermonter who just wants to make a difference.

I like that.

His name is Bernie Paquette.

These are his words:

On an individual level in 2012, will you compost in order to build new rich soil? Will you plant a tree to help prevent soil erosion and to slow carbon build up?  Will you pick up littered trash to prevent it from reaching our waterways where it kills fish and other aquatic life? Will you find ways to use less plastic? (Plastic never completely deteriorates and it is killing birds, fish, and turtles while polluting our ocean shores.) Will you place sustainability in the forefront of your production and consumption decisions? How will you personally transition from a participant in a gluttonous wasteful economy to a participant in a Green sustainable economy?

Thanks, Bernie.

I will also ask, “What are you doing to be a part of a Green sustainable economy?”  Kinda fits in with my last post about the Keurig…

Thanks for reading, and please, go check out Bernie’s blog if you have a moment.

Responsibility in not convenient — it’s necessary.

Rethink.  Refuse.  Reduce.  Reuse.  Reimagine.

Love.

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I am appalled by this machine.  In this day and age, as the world we live on becomes one giant garbage dump, the money that companies (like Vermont’s Green Mountain Coffee Roasters) are making off of this is absurd.  The waste that is generated makes me sick.  The lack of thought in regards to the environment is a disgrace.

And for what?  Convenience?  Really?

Is it individual choice to dictate how we live our lives?  Is it a responsibility of a government to create order and tell us how to live?  Is it a belief system inherent in our culture that tells us how to live?  Should the companies that create waste be responsible for it?

The plastic K-cups do not get recycled.  The coffee grounds do not get composted.

The coffee itself can cost upwards of $51 a pound when all is said and done.  Wow.  Read about it in the New York Times piece from February 7, 2012:

With Coffee, the Price of Individualism Can Be High

A New York Times piece from August, 2010 about the waste of K-cup packaging:

A Coffee Conundrum

The life cycle of K-cups and their hidden costs from Carbon Diet, a website that helps people figure out how to go green:

K-Cup Coffee Maker Garbage An Environmental Issue

So, what?  So, single-use plastics are ruining our planet.

Think for a change, and change will happen.  The Dalai Lama says it starts with yourself.  Or was that Buddha?

I have a hemp coffee filter, a single cup coffee brewer to put on top of my mug, a bean grinder that runs on solar, and a tea kettle to heat the water.  All of that may not seem convenient, but it sure does make me cherish that cup of coffee.

I am interested in Green Mountain Coffee’s opinion regarding this, so I sent them a message asking them how they were addressing the waste produced by their K-cups.  They have not responded yet.  They pride themselves on “protecting the environment” and you can see their achievements here: Brewing a Better World.  It is quite a list, and I applaud them.  But the list stops in 2009.  Hmm…

According to CNNMoney, they are #2 on Fortune’s list of fastest growing companies in 2011.

So, screw the environment for profit?  Am I getting that right?  If I am wrong, by all means set me straight.

Thanks for reading.

Responsibility in not convenient — it’s necessary.

Rethink.  Refuse.  Reduce.  Reuse.  Reimagine.

Love.

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We are making connections every day.

Every moment, really.

Not sure I can define it right now, in this moment, to you, but I will give it a shot.

I have been doing it all my life — so have you.  From the moment we were born into the world.  I had help to get here — I had to have help.  We all did.  You would not be alive today without help from a total stranger.

The woman, our midwife, who will help my child enter the world — well, they have not met yet, have they, those two?

There will be a connection, I think, in that moment.

There are connections everywhere.

All around us.  All around me.  All around you.

All the time.

Have you forgotten?  Do you notice?

Take a moment to remember.  Take a moment to look, to open your eyes, to acknowledge life.

And should you take the time to reflect, in that moment, will you hear the wind in the trees, or see the sun on water, or the newborn breath of life…

or the passing of an era?

Will you notice your freedoms being taken from you?  Will you notice the trash?

I do not know how to not notice these things anymore, and it makes me sad.  Mostly though, I am not sad, and I am trying my damnedest to not complain, to not bitch and moan, to not sound like a fanatic, to not sound like that guy on the corner who acts like a crazy nut job, and I think I am doing a pretty good job at it, overall…

Spring is on the way.  There will be plants going into the soil, seeds germinating, the earth is turning…

Mostly, though, I have faith — in the connections this world provides us.

Faith.  That’s an interesting word, isn’t it?  I am learning a new faith — one that encompasses the entire world, the world that I am connected to, the world that I could not survive without…

The world that you cannot survive without…

Thanks for reading.

Responsibility in not convenient — it’s necessary.

Rethink.  Refuse.  Reduce.  Reuse.  Reimagine.

Love.

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When I first decided to think about plastic, I really did not know what would come of it.  That’s the way things go, though, isn’t it?  You get an idea, and you do stuff related to that idea.  Right?

My New Year’s Resolution two years ago was to not use single-use plastic grocery bags.  Now look at me.  If you look one way, you might compare me to a religious nut (you know who you are); look another way and you might become defensively hostile (you know who you are, too); look yet another way and you might say, “Thanks for helping me to see things differently.”

I much prefer that last one, and you know who you are…

But I won’t begrudge the first two, especially since those people are both related to me.

I am not seeking applause or accolades or even more “thank yous” by writing these words.

I am merely writing words.

Two years ago there was this little thing called the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, or COP16, for short.  I had just discovered that twitter was a valuable tool for gathering information and used it to witness the Summit from my little apartment in Vermont.  I felt that I was a part of a global community for the first time in my life.

At the same time that I was discovering the global community, I was discovering the local community.  Having just recently moved across the continent, I was still getting acquainted — with the people, the landscape, the weather… my Self…

I was working as a saute cook in a high-end bistro in the capital of Vermont.  I was cooking with nearly 100% local food for the first time in the twenty-odd years I had been in the restaurant industry.  It was a wonderful discovery.  Do you know how to cook a parsnip?  Were you aware that the color of carrots is not just orange, but that there are hues of reds and purples?  How many different kinds of beets have you seen?  Don’t get me started on the organic vegetable farms I have worked on since…

I am nearly 43 years old.  I have been around a while.  Life has a way of tempering.  Tempering… it’s a good word to know.  What does it mean?  Look it up.

Finding a balance (did you look up the definition of tempering?) in life is no simple task.  I spent more than a year on the streets of San Francisco making a living as a bicycle messenger learning balance…

Losing your balance — well, that is a simple thing, easily accomplished.  One slip is all it takes…  I think you might all know that…

I would posit that our planet is unbalanced.

That sentence made me pause, to stare out the window for a moment, lost in thought.  What does that mean, to be unbalanced?

We start off living, us humans, dependent upon our parents to care for us, to feed and clothe and protect us.  Until we can learn how to do it by ourselves.  Why do we make such a big deal out of that first step?

That first step.  It is one of those moments when we discover within ourselves that we can balance…

That is one form of finding balance.

What about balance by losing crutches?  There is purity in that, as well.

That is what plastics are for me — a crutch.  I would like to rid what plastic is doing to this planet, what plastic is doing to unbalance our world.  We need to move beyond plastic.  Evolution is not designed for us to destroy ourselves with short-sighted greed.

Plastic = Oil.  Oil is being controlled by the few to control the many.  Oil is destroying our planet.  Look at what Chevron is arguing in court with the indigenous people of Ecuador.  Look at the travesty of the Deep Horizon/Gulf Oil Spill.  Look at the wars we wage to maintain access to a steady flow of the stuff.  Look at the senseless politics and what people will say just to make a few bucks (okay, a few million or billion).  Look at what is happening in Nigeria right now, today.

We cannot afford to slip at this point.  We carry the weight of the world on our shoulders; to fall now would cost us greatly…

Are you balanced?

Thanks for reading.

Responsibility in not convenient — it’s necessary.

Rethink.  Refuse.  Reduce.  Reuse.  Reimagine.

Love.

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I skim the news, reading what catches my eye.  The items I discover will paint a mosaic in my mind and the connections between them start to form…

From Yale Environment 360 (04 Jan, 2012) there is this opinion piece about solar power for the poor: Solar Power Off the Grid:Energy Access for World’s Poor

The Wall Street Journal (30 Dec, 2011) had this to say about US imports and exports: In a first, gas and other fuels are top US export

BBC News (09 Jan, 2012) and a fuel strike in Nigeria because of government subsidies being cut: Nigeria fuel strike brings country to a halt“

BBC News (08, Jan, 2012) on the cargo ship that ran aground months ago: Stricken ship Rena breaks up off New Zealand coast

From Reuters (05 Jan, 2012) a piece on how it is possible to make a difference as a consumer: Analysis: Molly, Crackers and consumer power gone viral

And finally there is Bernie Sanders, a politician who genuinely seems to be fighting for individual Americans and the ideals of democracy: The Saving American Democracy Amendment

…we live in a world that is rapidly changing in just about every way you can imagine. And while it may be hard to think about living on a global scale, we all are.  That cargo ship stuck on that reef leaking oil and killing thousands of seabirds may have the crap made in a foreign country that we buy in the store.  If our government should ever stop being bought off by Big Oil, will we have a shutdown of our economy like what is happening in Nigeria?  Should our politicians be intimidated by Big Business, or can we get our rights restored to us by a constitutional amendment?  Why are the poorest people burning kerosene and not using solar, if only because it makes sense to those reaping the benefits, as our country exports more oil and gas than we import?  And yet, one consumer can actually make a difference…

That must feel good.

That was how I felt when I read this article in the Guardian (10 April, 2011): Bolivia enshrines natural world’s rights with equal status for Mother Earth

Indigenous philosophy resonates with me, perhaps the underpinnings of everything, tinting what I see and how I see it.

I think we just need to keep reminding ourselves to stay balanced.  Not sure this all makes sense to you — click on those links and read the articles and watch the videos — and make your own connections…

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Responsibility is not convenient — it’s necessary.

Rethink.  Refuse.  Reduce.  Reuse.  Reimagine.

Love.

 

 

 

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Think about what you buy on a regular basis.  Does it come wrapped in plastic?  Is it made of plastic?

Make a list.  Or just pick one of those regular things.

Now, give it some thought.  Really get in there and investigate the item.  Where does it come from?  How is it made?  Who made it?  How does it get to you?  Are there alternative products that you could buy instead?  Where do they come from and how are they made…

I am going to write a short list of things that involve plastic, that I no longer have to think about:

1. Bags.  I use bags made out of old t-shirts.  I love them!
2. Coffee filters.  Although the ones I used to use came in a cardboard box, I now use a filter made of hemp.  It requires a little extra work from me — to clean out and compost the grounds — but I am okay with that.
3. Milk.  No plastic jugs.  The cardboard 1/2 gallon containers have those plastic screw-top lids now that annoy me.  There is a company that sells their milk in glass, which I love, but they still use a plastic lid.  This morning, we got our first container of milk from the organic dairy farm up the road.  The milk was still warm and we met the cow that produced it.  Ha ha!  No more plastic.
4. Deodorant.  Last spring, I used the last of my store-bought deodorant.  No more plastic containers.  Now, I have a homemade deodorant made out of all-natural ingredients that works great.  It’s in a glass jar.  I love it!

I will stop there for the moment.  The list could be quite large, but it is good to not be overwhelmed.

I am taking this one step at a time.  It is a process.  Slowly, I am weening myself off of plastic.  I won’t tell you that I am plastic free — far from it.  But, I am working on it.

Not everyone has the good fortune to live down the road from an organic dairy farm — I understand that.

But isn’t there something you can do to make a change in your own life?  Start a garden on the roof of your apartment building or a planter box in your window so you don’t have to buy herbs in plastic packaging; get a reusable coffee mug so you don’t buy to-go cups with throw-away plastic lids on them; walk to work one day a week, or ride your bicycle…

Pick one thing and see where it leads…

When you start to make a change, the idea that you really can change does not seem so farfetched.

I suspect as you take on this challenge that what you may have originally seen as difficult will, in fact, make your life simpler.  As it happens, Beth Terry over at “My Plastic-free Life” is taking a simple-living challenge that she just mentioned today.  Maybe go over there and see what that is all about.

It would be very easy for me to just say, “To hell with it, what does it matter?  How can one person make a difference against such insurmountable odds as the corrupt politicians and the corporations that dictate how we live our lives?”

But, I won’t.  I have some say in how I live my life.  Nobody said it was easy.

Responsibility is not convenient — it’s necessary.

Rethink.  Refuse.  Reduce.  Reuse.  Reimagine.

Love.

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I went home for the holidays.  I am not too big on the whole Christmas thing, and certainly not on the idea of spending money and buying stuff.

I have a large family — lots of brothers and sisters and nieces and a nephew.  And my parents.  Nothing I say in this post in any way detracts from the love I have for them.

They all, on some level or another, understand that I do not like plastic.

And with a baby on the way, my desire to eliminate plastic from my life — from our lives — has increased.

So it was with real pleasure that out of the very few gifts received, the one that gave me the most pleasure was a wooden yellow duck with wheels.  There was even a smudge mark on one side where an eye would be that caused me to ask my sister where she got it.  She said, “It came from a friend.”  Yes!  An all-wooden toy, and a used one at that!  So sweet.

It turned out that I needed that duck to hold onto during the ensuing present opening moments.  It seemed as if the room suddenly became full of plastic.  Every gift was plastic.  If it was not plastic, it was wrapped in plastic.  The culminating gift — from one niece to another — was a blow-up pool with a couple of arches that was filled with dozens of balls — all made out of plastic.  It had that “new plastic” smell to it when it was opened.

I am pretty sure that that smell is toxic.  I found this from the Center for Health, Environment & Justice website: new plastic smell.  Read the part about the “108 volatile organic compounds.”  Anything with the word “volatile” in its title does not sound good to me.

I had to leave the house.  I did.  And I think they knew why I had to get out of there.

The sister who gave us the wooden duck was the mother of the child who received the plastic ball pool.  She was excited to get it.

I try not to rant; I try to live and let live; I try not to judge — the whole “stones and glass houses” thing.  And I certainly do not want to offend.

Okay, what the hell, here’s a little tiny rant:

It’s just that this world we all live “on,” rather than “in” is turning into a wasteland.  I want to raise the alarm.  I do not want to be a part of something so painful as the dying of a planet.  That is the slippery slope we are all on right now and it scares the hell out of me.  Sure, sure, the planet will survive us, but at what cost?  The extinction of thousands of species, the destruction of entire ecosystems, the end of diversity, our youth lost in a haze of instant gratification to the detriment of other nations and cultures…

Maybe next year will be different, though.

Next year, I will be wishing for a Plastic-Free Christmas…

I think by then that perhaps our yellow wooden duck might have some ducklings.

Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year.

Responsibility is not convenient — it’s necessary.

Rethink.  Refuse.  Reduce.  Reuse.  Reimagine.

Love.

 

 

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COP17.

It’s a mouthful: The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 7th Session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties (CMP7) to the Kyoto Protocol.

The conference just ended a few days ago.

I watched the end of the conference Saturday night.  It seemed that the room full of dignitaries was not really satisfied with the end result.  Ecuador and Nicaragua were definitely not happy.

The online news source, EurActiv – an EU news and policy debate site, had this to say about the way the conference ended:

Most importantly, the teetering but symbolically vital Kyoto Protocol was given a second wind with the EU bringing its voluntary pledges of the Copenhagen Summit under its auspices.

But without comparable pledges from big emitters like the US and China, for the next few years the Protocol will only cover about 15% of the world’s emissions.

Canada has pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol.  Al-Jazeera says this of Canada: “The decision to quit will not help the international reputation of the North American country, a major energy producer which critics say is becoming a climate renegade.“

OXFAM International has this to say:

Negotiators at the UN climate talks have narrowly avoided a collapse, agreeing to the bare minimum deal possible. The plan gets the Green Climate Fund up and running without any sources of funding, preserves a narrow pathway to avoid 4 degrees of warming and gets a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol without key members.

The failure to seal an ambitious deal will have painful consequences for poor people around the world. A four degree temperature rise could be one of utter devastation for poor farmers who will face increasing hunger and poverty.

If action is not taken, farmers in parts of Africa could face a drop in crop yields of more than fifty percent within this generation or that of their children.  Food prices could more than double within the next two decades, up to half of which caused by climate change. This makes delivering real concrete assistance to ensure the most vulnerable people can protect themselves from a changing climate even more vital.

You can read the whole press release here: Durban Platform leaves world sleepwalking towards four degrees warming

How do you change the world?  Should we all just say, to hell with it?  The high school kids I was with today don’t seem to care.  We watched, An Inconvenient Truth.  How do I get young people to change their habits before it is too late?  In a pre-calculus class earlier in the day, all I had to do was sit there while the kids did their work.  Towards the end of class, I started talking about my blog, and Twitter, and that led to plastics, and one of the girls had a to go cup of coffee with a plastic lid.  I told her,

Stop living a throw-away life-style — we cannot afford it.  We are drowning in plastic.

The next time I see her, I will ask her about plastic lids and whether or not she has made a change…

If 194 countries can at least walk away from the table with an agreement, even if that agreement is barely symbolic, I think I can talk just one teenage girl into getting a reusable coffee mug.  To take this analogy one step further — if that girl cannot afford a reusable coffee mug, I can buy her one; shouldn’t the developed countries — most notably the ones who cannot join the rest of the world in agreement — the USA, China, Canada, etc… — help out those that need help?  Read about Norway and what they are doing to help preserve the world’s forests here: REDD+ biggest success in climate change talks.

Whether just one person, or the representative of a nation of people, we have a responsibility.

Responsibility is not convenient — it’s necessary.

Rethink.  Refuse.  Reduce.  Reuse.  Reimagine.

Love.

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Baby bottles.  I just found out that my future child needs one.  Maybe two, I am not sure.  Glass.  Not plastic.  But the tip, the nipple, they call it.  What the hell is that made of?

Cloth diapers.  Yep, I will be doing some laundry.

No plastic toys, please!  Is there a polite way to tell people that I do not want plastic toys for my child?  I really don’t want them, and if I have to be rude about it, I will be.

It’s gonna be an adventure, that’s for sure.  But one that I am very excited about.  And, you know, this will change everything.

As I wrote that last sentence, I thought of the seventh generation, that saying from a Native American culture.  So, of course, I looked into the meaning of those words.  I went first to Wikipedia — “Seven generation sustainability“, which is not a place to cite a source, but it opens portals.  I skimmed “The Constitution of the Iroquois Nations” and that led me to look for Oren Lyons and his take on the seventh generation idea.  I found a transcript of a speech he gave to the United Nations in 1993.  In that speech he said,

Our leaders were instructed to be men of vision and to make every decision on behalf of the seventh generation to come; to have compassion and love for those generations yet unborn. We were instructed to give thanks for All That Sustains Us.

He continues on, speaking of many ways the Indigenous Peoples and this earth have been treated.  And he says this:

Even though you and I are in different boats, you in your boat and we in our canoe, we share the same River of Life. What befalls me, befalls you. And downstream, downstream in this River of Life, our children will pay for our selfishness, for our greed, and for our lack of vision.

500 years ago, you came to our pristine lands of great forests, rolling plains, crystal clear lakes and streams and rivers. And we have suffered in your quest for God, for Glory, for Gold. But, we have survived. Can we survive another 500 years of “sustainable development?” I don’t think so. Not in the definitions that put `sustainable’ in today. I don’t think so.

You can read the full text of his speech here: Haudenosaunee Faithkeeper, Chief Oren Lyons addressing delegates to the United Nations Organization.

Where do I go from here?  I have a child on the way, a family to care for.  What do I do about those short-sighted people that are trying to run our lives?  How can I get them to understand that the destruction of our natural world for the short-term benefits of their greed and avarice, for their selfishness and lack of maturity, is wrong?

I am working on becoming a teacher.  I am working on becoming a father.  Both make me understand that the true quality of life is life itself — my generation, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next…

Responsibility is not convenient — it’s necessary.

Rethink.  Refuse.  Reduce.  Reuse.  Reimagine.

Love.