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The Watershed Project

plastic

Shampoo and All | Tips for a Plastic-Free Life

What about shampoo? That’s one question that comes to mind when contemplating what it really means to live a plastic-free life. Executive Director Linda Hunter recently spoke with writer and activist Beth Terry about her bold decision to avoid all plastic products.


Linda Hunter: When and why did you decide to lead a plastic free life?
Beth Terry: Before June of 2007, I lived like many Americans. I had piles of plastic bags in my kitchen, drank bottled water and tossed the bottles in the trash if there was no recycling bin handy, and lived on frozen microwave dinners in plastic trays. I bought whatever I wanted without considering its impact. But one night while browsing the Internet, I stumbled across an article that shocked me out of my mad consumerist ways. The article explained the problem of ocean plastic pollution, something I’d never heard of, and showed a photo of a dead albatross whose carcass was full of ordinary plastic pieces, things like bottle caps, things that I was using on a daily basis. Almost instantly, I realized that my personal actions could have a direct impact on creatures thousands of miles away, and I knew I had to do something.


I decided to try and see if I could live without acquiring any new plastic first as an experiment. I was interested to know what my plastic footprint was. And I wanted to find out what plastic-free options existed in the world. So I created a blog (MyPlasticFreeLife.com, formerly known as Fake Plastic Fish) to record everything I learned about plastic and living plastic-free, and now I have compiled the most relevant information into a useful book, Plastic-Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too (Skyhorse, 2012), to help and inspire other people who want to reduce the amount of plastic in their lives.

LH: What is the hardest plastic to give up?
BT: For me, the hardest thing was to replace those frozen microwave meals! I didn’t want to cook. I. Did. Not. Want. To. Cook! So I was determined to find a microwaveable alternative that didn’t come in plastic. I must have bought every single brand of frozen meal–both conventional and organic–just to see what the packaging was like. And I discovered the hard fact that all frozen foods come in plastic. Even if they come in a cardboard carton or tray, the container is lined with plastic. So I had to learn to eat whole, fresh foods. And I’m healthier for it!


LH: How do you carry around bulk items if you don’t have a car?
BT: Living in North Oakland, I’m fortunate to have access to great public transportation and walkable, bikeable streets, so my husband and I carry home our groceries either on our bikes or on the bus. Often, we just walk it home if there’s not too much. We also have a Zip Car membership, so we can use a car if we have a particularly big shop to do, but that doesn’t happen very often. The key is really to plan ahead and make sure we have our reusable bags and containers with us when we leave the house to go shopping. I also carry a few cloth produce bags and reused paper bags in my purse at all times in case I want to shop more spontaneously.

LH: What about items like shampoo?
BT: There’s a whole chapter on personal care and cleaning products in the book. For shampoo, there are several options. Some people enjoy shampoo bars, which are just like soap bars except you use them to wash your hair. A brand I’m testing now is Chagrin Valley. Many Etsy sellers make shampoo bars. And the store Lush sells naked shampoo bars without any packaging. Another method of hair washing, which is what I do normally, is referred to as “No ‘Poo“. You wash with a solution of baking soda and water and rinse with a solution of apple cider vinegar and water. For me, it works great and is super inexpensive. Vinegar is great for the hair, and the smell dissipates very quickly.


LH: If there could be one policy enacted on a world-wide level to address the plastic issue, what would you like it to be?
BT: I can’t choose one policy because there are several different problems with plastic that must be addressed. From a waste perspective, we need policies to restrict the production of single-use disposable products, like bags, bottles, wrappers, and containers. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade, but in the environment, it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, which can actually be even more problematic than bigger pieces of plastic. Many countries around the world have passed bans and/or fees for plastic bags, styrofoam, and other types of disposables.

Once we eliminate as much disposable plastic as possible, we need extended producer responsibility policies to require manufacturers to be responsible for the full lifecycle of the products they produce instead of relying on communities to bear the burden. When companies are required to ensure their products can be recycled, they will redesign their products to be more easily recycled from the start.

Those measures address the waste and litter issues, but not the toxicity issue. Plastics contain many additives to produce the desired qualities of the material, and manufacturers are not even required to disclose what chemicals they add to their plastic products. What’s more, in the United States, we don’t exercise the Precautionary Principle, which would require chemicals be proven safe before they are placed on the market. So I want to see policies that ensure chemicals are safe and that require companies to list the chemicals they are using, just as they have to list the ingredients in food. Because really, a plastic food wrapper, bottle, or container IS another ingredient in the food, since those chemicals can leach out.

LH: What the easiest ways to get started with a plastic-free life?
BT: First, let me say that what’s easy for me might not be easy for someone else. For me, the easiest first step was getting in the habit of always having my reusable bags with me so I never had to take another plastic grocery bag. I have a funny story in the book about my first attempts and what happened once when we forgot. Carrying small compressible bags in my purse makes it easy to always have a bag.

One thing I encourage people to do is to collect their plastic waste for a week or more (there is an exercise in the book for doing just that) to see what their actual plastic footprint looks like and to help determine which plastics to focus on first. Whatever you start with, don’t try to eliminate all plastics from your life at once. I started very gradually, finding an alternative as I’d use something up. I knew that if I tried to go cold turkey, I would give up in frustration. But by taking it step by step, I have reduced my plastic waste to one grocery bag full per year. And that includes both the recyclable and non-recyclable stuff. I don’t expect everyone else to be as extreme as I am, but I just want to show what’s possible and to encourage people to get started.

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Plastic Over Clothes? Eww! | Say “No” to Plastic on Your Dry Cleaning

By Linda Hunter

Shu Tan is my hero. She is the proprietor of Jack’s Laundry where I take my shirts to be laundered and ironed. Last year, Shu hung The Watershed Project’s Trash Compactors poster, the everyday heroes who are putting a dent in our addiction to plastic. Shu was a featured in our poster and is making a difference in an industry that has not been known for its fidelity to the environmental movement. Dry cleaning generates 300 million pounds of plastic waste each year– plastic waste that pollutes our oceans, rivers and lands.

Shu’s small act of courage made people in my community take notice. Today, more and more of Shu’s customers are saying, “no plastic, please.” Think about it. That bit of petroleum product covering your suits, shirts and dresses gets used just until you decide to put your fancy frock on and then the bag gets tossed directly into the trash! There is also evidence that leaving one’s clothes in a plastic bag actually damages the fabric. Plastic laundry bags can cause yellowing, staining and can weaken fibers. Color change is caused by BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) an anti-oxidant in the plastic bag. When BHT comes into contact with impurities in the air and with moisture it forms a yellow pigment that transfers to the fabric.


So here’s what you do instead. When you go to pick up your laundry, tell your local dry cleaner, “No plastic on my clothes, please.” He or she can take the plastic off and reuse it on other clothing. This act reduces the amount of plastic that is simply thrown away. It also saves your hard working laundry worker money because he or she doesn’t need to buy so many plastic bags! If you are not going to be wearing your laundered clothes for a while, consider taking a garment bag along with you when you drop off your laundry. There are even eco-friendly bags on the market that are designed precisely for picking up your dry cleaning. It’s the clothes equivalent of bringing a reusable bag to the grocery store or farmers market.


Want to encourage your laundry to be more eco-friendly? Download our Trash Compactors poster here and ask that your laundry post it in their shop. Download and print a copy of Shu’s sign and ask your dry cleaner to hang it in their window. Send us a photo of your laundry’s conversion and a picture of the folks who are making it happen and we will post to our website and Facebook page.

Together, we can make small steps to reduce our plastic footprint, one clean shirt at a time.

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The Demise of Single-Use Plastic Bags Continues | Californians ‘Ban’ding Together for a Better Tomorrow


By Ken Schwab

Great News! Momentum to eradicate the plastic bag from California is building to an all-time high. A growing list of cities and counties throughout the state are joining the effort, most recently Marin County, San Jose, and Santa Cruz County. Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi of San Francisco, who spearheaded the movement when he was a County Supervisor, appropriately described the phenomena as, “One of the most interesting wildfires of common sense.”

The results have been in for many years and the facts have not changed; plastic bags are a hazard to our environment and an economic burden on society. The bag has a short functional lifetime of a few hours whereas its destructive time span is infinite. No one can dispute that the bags’ design is intended to be disposable, for single-use, and cheaper than paper.


Although accustomed to the plastic bag, it seems that consumers are willing and able to switch to re-usable or paper bags, even at a cost. “It’s a great thing,” and “good for the environment” are a few of the comments from customers since the ban became effective on the first of the year, according to Scott Mendenhall, Executive Team Lead for Target Stores in San Jose. He also witnessed customers who were unaware of the recent ban actually run back to their cars to grab their re-usable bags. If society is so enthusiastic to make this change, then why has the campaign met with so much resistance?

The American Chemistry Council (ACC), along with the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition, have made a feeble but effective effort to use lawsuits to intimidate municipalities into altering or abandoning proposed bag bans. The primary strategy for industry is to argue that society should not have fees imposed on them to purchase bags. “The thing to know overall is that plastic bag bans and fees don’t work, they just cause shifts to an alternative,” says Keith Christman, managing director of Plastics Markets for the ACC. In the case of Santa Cruz, County Board Chairman Mark Stone recently commented, “They said if we pull that restaurant (take-out bag) piece out of our ordinance, they would drop their lawsuit.” He added, “I would rather get the single-use bag ordinance in place right now, even if it means losing the restaurant bag piece.”


Despite the plastic bag lobby’s devious legal maneuvers, it seems that the general consensus among local lawmakers is on the side of bag bans. Most cities in California that are working on bans would even prefer to see a statewide measure. Rather than depleting limited local resources for individual bans, a statewide ban would have a larger backing and impact. Proponents were excited in February 2010 when Assembly Bill 1998 was introduced to ban single-use plastic bags in California. However, the bill failed to pass just six months later.

While lobbyists and government officials continue to debate the logistics of bag bans, there is a simple and easy way for you, as a watershed resident, to get involved. If every consumer took it upon themselves to embrace re-usable bags, then there would be no demand for plastic bags and hence no need to supply them. Your motivation and actions can make an immediate impact to the environment and allow future generations to thrive. “Be the change you want to see in the world” – Mahatma Ghandi

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Grassroots Activism Triumphs over Corporate Lobbyists | Cities, Counties, Citizens Take Action to Ban Single Use Plastic Bags

By Linda Hunter

Plastic bag manufacturers were dealt a critical blow last month when California’s highest court upheld a ban on plastic bags in Manhattan Beach. In its unanimous decision citing “substantial evidence and common sense” the California Supreme Court said that Manhattan Beach was not required to conduct a costly environmental review when it passed an ordinance prohibiting the bags in 2008.

The plastic industry used this requirement mandating an environmental impact report as a tactic to thwart the growing movement to ban single use plastic bags– you know, the ones that blow around everywhere– polluting our watersheds and our ocean, littering beaches, strangling wildlife and clogging landfills.

But it wasn’t the only weapon in their bag of tricks. The most prominent plastics lobby group, the American Chemistry Council, spent 1.4 million dollars to defeat a plastic bag tax in Seattle and another two million to defeat legislation that would have banned plastic bags throughout the state of California. When San Francisco proposed a tax on plastic bags four years ago, the plastic lobbyists headed straight to Sacramento and convinced the legislature to pass a law making it illegal for local municipalities to tax plastic bags. That didn’t sit well with the sponsor of the bill, San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, so he amended his legislation to ban plastic bags outright, making San Francisco the first City and County in the nation to do so. Unfortunately, when other municipalities like the City of Oakland tried to get on board, they were told that they would need to find a way to pay for the costly Environmental Impact Report. The Council has gone so far as to pressure California schools to adjust educational curriculum to include positive messages about plastic bags– a truly despicable strategy, and a punch in the gut to those working to protect our watersheds.


According to their website, “The Progressive Bag Affiliates of the American Chemistry Council promotes the responsible use, reuse, recycling and disposal of plastic bags and creates positive change in our communities by promoting the increased recycling of plastic bags as well as their proper use, reuse and disposal. We work to create solutions to reduce the number of plastic bags that end up in our landfills and, sometimes, as litter. Together with policy makers, businesses and community members, PBA is dedicated to implementing new ideas and improving existing programs that make a difference.” PBA’s members include the leading manufacturers of plastic bags and polyethylene resins: Advance Polybag, Inc., Dow Chemical Company and Exxon Mobil.

But despite the cheery optimism coming from their spin strategists, this type of greenwashing http://plastics.americanchemistry.com/Sustainability-Recycling is simply not working anymore. In fact, the industry and their lobbyists are looking more and more ridiculous as evidenced by their David and Goliath lawsuit against Chicobag, a successful local company that makes reusable bags; and who is, according to the lawsuit, irreparably harming the plastic bag business. Well, that’s the point, right?


I am heartened by the success of small grassroots efforts to protect the environment from the damage caused by marine debris (including a recent effort by West Contra Costa County to ban plastic bags). In particular, Washington D.C. managed to pass a tax on plastic bags with the help of the local Surfrider Foundation‘s campaign: Skip the Bag, Save the River that focused on the pollution that locals could see firsthand in the troubled Anacostia River. And it worked– in just the first month plastic bag use plummeted to 3.3 million per month, down from an average of 22.5 million per month in 2009.

When plastic bags have been banned throughout the country and the planet, people will go back to doing what they did before there were plastic bags– simply bringing a reusable bag, putting smaller items in one’s pockets or purse. There will be so much less clutter in our lives and our creeks, rivers and watersheds will thank us.

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