Aly Pavela’s Plastics challenge

Section 309

9:14 am

Needless to say, I have already broken the challenge. Twice. I hit the snooze button on my plastic alarm clock, and I checked the weather on my phone. However, luckily my computer is metal. Uh oh. I just realized the keys on the keyboard are plastic. Today is going to be harder than I thought.

12:51 pm

I walked into the bathroom only to realize that I was absolutely surrounded by plastics. My toothbrush is plastic, my contacts case is plastic, all my make up is plastic. I don’t get to wash my face, or put on my contacts. I decided to give it and put on my glasses (I had to be able to see in class!) and brush my teeth. Even though I was extremely thirsty, I refused to pick up my nalgene water bottle on the way out Grabbing my backpack, putting on my coat for class, and walking to my Environmental Studies section wasn’t hard. However, in order to take notes in section, I had to whip out my plastic notebook and pen. On the way back from section I stopped at the Hillel to get a bagel seeing as I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. I had to forgo the plastic to-go box that my bagel was supposed to come in, and rather I wrapped it in napkins. Although I spotted a huge stack of plastic cups and a fountain to get water from, I restrained myself and headed back to my dorm.

4:00 pm

I just made one of my friends text my mother from my phone to ensure her that I’m still alive because she has been calling and texting me all day and due to the fact that my phone is plastic, I can’t touch it. Luckily I only had one class to day, so since then I have just taken a plastic-free nap (which wasn’t difficult) and caught up on watching Modern Family on my computer without using my plastic headphones (much to my roomate’s dismay.) I tried to hit the plastic keyboard on my metal computer as infrequently as I could. Now I’m going to go read for my Anthropology class. I’m not going to annotate in the book as I usually would because that would require me to use a plastic pen.

7:00 pm

I’m hungry, and slightly annoyed. I feel that all I can really do without plastic is read and do my homework with a wooden pencil. And sleep. I go to the cafeteria in my dorm to eat dinner, and I’m unable to touch a plastic tray, or a plastic cup. Great, the dehydration continues. Why is it so hard to get water without plastics? I eat some pasta and salad on a glass plate with metal utensils. I am forced to avoid a delicious looking chocolate chip cookie because it is covered in plastic. This is not fun.

11:00 pm

For the remainder of the night I watched part of a movie in a friend’s room (I made them turn on and off the T.V. and handle the DVD…) And studied for a big test I have on Friday, by reading through the text book and marking it with a wooden pencil, which needless to say was not very affective. I also caved in a used my phone…it was too hard without it!! Today, I’ve learned that plastics are literally unavoidable. As much as it gives me anxiety to look around my desk or my bathroom and realize how much they surround me, I must use them. What I can do is try to be conscious in using things like plastic utensils or plastic wrap, and try to cut down my usage of that.