Aaron Ranke Section 307 - Plastic Challenge

Going an entire day without the use of plastic is a daunting task. In reading the first few blog submissions, it was easy to see that in order to be successful, extreme planning was necessary. Once the necessary precautions are taken, living a day without plastic isn’t that difficult.
The most important decision I had to make was the day in which I would go without plastic. During the school week, it is absolutely necessary to have access to a computer, textbooks, my binders, my phone, contacts and glasses and all the other hordes of items that I see as being imperative to life. So this immediately eliminates five days every week. On Saturdays and Sundays in the fall and early winter, there is no way I can live without TV and computer access. Football is life during this 5-6 month period and I refuse go a Saturday or Sunday without watching college or professional football. I need to monitor my fantasy football teams and cheer for the red and white and the green and gold. So this naturally sets up a potential problem. I can’t live without plastic on weekdays or on the weekends. So really, my only option was to pick a day over Thanksgiving break, outside of Thursday, Saturday and Sunday (football). So my choices over break were whittled down to the Friday after the greatest day of the year.
In order to set myself up for success, I spent a lot of time preparing on Thanksgiving evening. I started by setting out fresh fruits and a bowl of cereal (minus the milk) for breakfast the following day. I then put together two plates of wonderful Thanksgiving leftovers and put them in the garage to keep cold. That took care of my meals. I then printed off my required readings for my classes. I put all of my homework on our spare dining room table downstairs (which was conveniently set up due to the Thanksgiving holiday). In order to make doing my homework a plastic-free affair, I took my necessary notes out of my plastic binders and strategically placed my 5 sharpened Ticonderoga pencils right next to my notes (by far the best wooden pencil on the market). I set up a nice bed on the floor with blankets and my wonderful, feather-stuffed pillow. I then took a nice long shower and brushed my teeth at around 11:30pm. At around that time, the tryptophan from the pounds of turkey I consumed that day was weighing me down and I passed out on the wonderful basement floor.
I awoke on judgment day around 10:15am and immediately went upstairs to eat a nutritious breakfast. I grew up on a dairy farm so all of our milk comes right from the bulk tank and goes into glass mason jars, a plastic-free way of obtaining milk. Granted, the vacuum pipes that run our milking machines and the machines themselves are plastic, but the milk was acquired two days before judgment day. So I poured some delicious farm-fresh milk (which was also kept in the garage to keep cold) over my already poured cereal and ate it along with a banana. I then went downstairs and started reading the two novels assigned for the weekend. I knocked out the rest of My Year of Meats by 2pm and headed upstairs for a break. I took the first plate of cold turkey, stuffing, pie and apple salad and ate it cold. My dad then asked for my help to make some wood from a dead tree in the woods behind my house. Because I wasn’t using plastic, I bundled up in three layers of long underwear (tops and bottoms) and two pairs of cotton socks along with my rubber work boots and was forced to use the wooden handled splitter to manually split the wood (my dad got to use the chainsaw). After three hours of backbreaking labor, I took a leak in the woods (I figured I’d avoid a toilet just in case there was some plastic content), and then went back inside and began reading my other book for the weekend, Roaring Camp, for my history class. Around 8pm I took a dinner break, eating the last cold plate of Thanksgiving leftovers from the garage. I again went back downstairs and kept reading my book until the clock struck midnight.
Living a day without plastic is a simple act if one has tons of homework to do and if there isn’t any good football games on. It takes a lot of preparation, but as long as the correct precautions are taken, it is entirely possible to do over a 24 hour period. It also helps if it’s cold outside so you can eat non-spoiled food without using plastic. The hours of prep time and the fact that you need to use plastic in order to prepare for a 24 hour period of plastic-free living means that sustained plastic free living is unrealistic if not impossible. Even though I cut out tons of plastic from my day, I still spent time in a heated home (albeit with a wood burning stove) that requires plastic to disperse the heat throughout the house. There may have been plastic in my clothing or other items that I used without thinking. Plastic is so deeply saturated into the American lifestyle that it is impossible to live an even semi-normal life without plastic usage. The seemingly only way to live without plastic is to revert to a hunter-gatherer way of life, building your own shelter and killing your own food with wooden spears, bows, and arrows. Such a statement can almost be said to be egregious (sorry I always wanted to use that word in an essay). So even though plastic-free living is possible in the short run, the long term implication of living without plastic is asinine (sorry again, I’m on a roll).