A Weeks Worth Of Plastic

So last week I decided to do an experiment and log all the plastic trash I generate in a week. Each time I go diving I almost always spot some piece of plastic floating on the surface or littered across the seabed, so I know first hand the damage that plastics can do. I was wondering how much of that plastic could potentially have been mine many months, or maybe even years ago.

I was shocked when I found out how much plastic trash I generate in a week. After tallying everything carefully, it came to a garbage bag full of it, and that only after a week! It is not surprising that some enterprising spirits were able to build an entire ship out of plastic trash. They aptly called the ship the Plastiki, and are currently sailing across the oceans to raise awareness about the damage disposable plastic wrappers and containers pose to our environment.

You can read my plastic trash diary by starting from day one, but to spare you the daily nitty-gritty, I list it down here again:

• 8 plastic bags
• 8 cup covers
• 2 plastic coffee cups
• 1 iced tea bottle cap
• 6 granola bar wrappers
• 3 sports drink bottles
• 2 milk cartons (including tabs)
• 2 cereal container
• A cookie container
• A candy sachet
• One cracker container
• 5 cracker wrappers
• A wax container
  
• One shampoo bottle
• Bag of chips
• 5-Gallon water bottle cap wrapper
• BPA free sports water bottle wrapper
• 15 take-out containers
• Plastic spoon and fork
• Powdered juice sachets
• Plastic cable
• 4 miso soup sachets
• 2 small plastic bags (held vegetables)
• Styrofoam with cling-wrap 

All this from one week of regular consumption. You can check the daily posts out that I did not do anything strange like eat takeout everyday, or buy hundreds of Americanos at the local coffee shop. If just one person generates this much trash in a week, just image how much trash is generated in a year? Quick extrapolation would say no less than 52 garbage bags of plastic a year.

Plastic that is not biodegradable and will last for decades in our oceans. I live in a city with no less than 20 million souls. Many of them living below the poverty line, but I'm sure there are literally thousands of people here that have the same consumption pattern as I do. Even if only 1% show the same habits, that would mean 10.4 million garbage bags full of non-biodegradable plastic!

Now I have no problems understanding where those huge plastic garbage patches in our oceans are coming from (see one of my previous posts to watch a video about the great pacific garbage patch). The worst part is that I have known about these garbage patches for some time now, but apparently it has not pushed me to do something about it. I'm still generating so much plastic waste on a daily basis!

In my previous posts I already listed some things that can help reduce the amount of plastic we throw away on a daily basis:

• Many supermarkets sell reusable bags made of biodegradable materials, and only provide biodegradable plastic bags at the checkout counters
• A plastic bag tax, or even an outright ban, is in place in many countries
• Scientists are looking into fungi and microbes that can help break down plastics
• Technology exists, and is being actively developed, to turn plastic into diesel
• Research is taking place to use bio gas instead of crude oil for the production of plastics

These are great developments, but in the end the burden is on us consumers to change our habits. In the next week I will try to write up all the things I had to change or compromise to reduce the amount of plastic waste I generate. I will try to do this without compromising my current consumption pattern too much, because I want to find out all the things that everyone can do without having to give up any major creature comforts.