Alex Anderson Section 312

My plastic challenge day occurred a week ago in beautiful minneapolis. Since I was technically playing hooky that day, I decided why not do some school work and challenge myself at the same time. Luckily this revelation occurred on Tuesday night so I was able to make some appropriate set up measures.

Wednesday 11-24-10

Thankfully, it being break, I was able to sleep in as late as I wanted and did not have to rely on a plastic coated alarm clock. Rolling out of bed around noon, I proceeded to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I had squirted out some toothpaste the night before and having survived numerous summers at camp, the finger brush method solved the plastic dilemma.

Feeling pretty proud of myself, I proceeded to the kitchen to fix up some brunch. It was then that I realized to get into the fridge required the grabbing of a plastic handle. Right when I was about to give up and fail the mission, my lovely mother walked in and opened it for me. After grabbing a cardboard carton of eggs I was wondering how to cook them sans plastic and decided it would be safest if me madre played chef for me and the gem that she is, she agreed.

As I was eating my breakfast at my wooden table, with metals silverware, my sister joined me and casually flipped open her laptop. She proceeded to giggle at something that amused her and naturally my hands reached out to grab the computer. At the last moment I stopped myself and proceeded to glare at her until she read me my emails and facebook notifications for good measure.

Following breakfast, my baby nephew was scheduled to arrive and we were going to have a long awaited play date. At approximately 1 the chubby cheeked little man arrived and he went immediately for the toys. As he grabbed the plastic dinosaurs and neat-o plastic building blocks, I looked for ways to amuse him with a boring old teddy bear, (ignoring the plastic eyes), sadly he did not take the bait and continued to play with the cooler plastic inspired toys.

As snack time rolled around Carter was very excited for his yogurt and fruit and his mama had prepared this snack and packaged it in a glass container for the occasion. At this point I was beginning to think that maybe plastic wasn’t so hard to be without as long as appropriate measures are taken and people are around, when suddenly Carter began to whine for his sippy cup. For those of you unfamiliar with sippy cups, they are as essential as baby blankets for keeping children happy. As the whining grew louder and I realized there was no one around to cheat for me, I gave in and grabbed the blue and yellow plastic cup. Carter is nearing speaking age and I really want my name to be one of his first words, I had to!

Following this failure the challenge basically disintegrated into numerous failures. I used my cell phone no longer trusting my sister to convey my texts to me, I ran some errands in my plastic filled car and I turned on the giant plastic t.v (I had to watch a Top Chef rerun). At the end of the challenge I learned that there are ways to avoid plastic, but in doing so would make the way of life we are accustomed to much more difficult. There will always be an object that makes you join the dark side of plastic. In my case this was a little blue and yellow sippy cup.