Drastic Plastic Failure

So the plastic challenge eh? Hmm sounds virtually impossible to achieve, considering how everything in my plain view right now, as I sit on my couch, at the crib, has been “tarnished” with plastic. I mean I’m not going to lie, humans, including myself use plastic everyday, even when we think we are trying to avoid it. I’m not saying that nobody should try, because I am environmentally conscious and actually do try to recycle, pick up litter, turn off lights and etc. But living without plastic in today’s society is like trying to live without water. You might last a couple miserable days before passing out or dying.
I’ve read a lot of the previous entries and ill admit that people have made valiant efforts to try. Of course no one has honestly successfully achieved the plastic challenge unless they isolated themselves all day outside for 24 house, with nothing to eat except grass and tree leaves, wearing no clothes that had plastic in them, or coming up with any activity that even has the slightest amount of plastic in it. Therefore, I am going to give and honest account of how my last Wednesday unfolded, while I truly tried to go the entire day without plastic.

It was a cold Wednesday morning, actually it was 5:30 am and about 60 degrees in my apartment in the Equinox, in which I pay TOOO DAMMM MUCHHH for this place to be freezing cold. I might as well just go sleep in the lobby or something, dam. But anyways, I woke up to my roommate waking me up off of the floor at 5:30. The cold floor that had no plastics interwoven into it, so BAM its all good, I woke up without plastic. So I purposely don’t turn on the lights and throw some clothes on that I had lying on the floor, I mean you know how us boys keep the college apartment! Then I go to the bathroom sink, where I gargle a little Listerine to get rid of that o’so fresh morning breath. The night before I poured the mouthwash into a paper cup so I could last just that much longer without using plastic. So when I was done with that, I go up to the roommate and tell him, “ Hey bro, I think ill walk to lift this morning.” He looks at me with that morning ‘I-could-careless-look’ and tells me, “Alright Feast, just know that if your late, you know our consequences.” (He’s referring to the fact that if we do not show up on time at 6 a.m for the lift, the whole lift group gets punished. I mean you know how it is, that whole ‘the chain is only as strong as its weakest link’ concept). So I tell him “Don’t worry, it takes 16 minutes to walk from the equinox to the stadium, ill arrive at 5:56 and be ready to go.” So I set down my scooter keys, locked up and got to walking. Now, of course, which most people forgot in their account of their plastic challenge is that their clothes usually have some form of plastic on them, whether it be a button, zipper, or even draw string. But anyways, I arrive at the stadium. I can’t use my key fauve to open the door to the stadium, but luckily the door was open. I arrive at my locker, get changed, and here is where I had to choose between my ass or my class. Quite frankly I’d rather have my ass, so I proceeded to lift for an hour and a half. And Oh, did we use plastic! Plastic bands, plastic cleats, plastic sleds, plastic hurdles, plastic perfect push-ups. To be honest we use way more metal than plastic, so I guess I felt environmentally conscious when I was lifting. However, when we were done, I went to get a plastic cup to fill up with powerade out of a huge plastic dispenser. I went and grabbed some ice in a plastic bag, then went to shower, where I used soap out of a plastic dispenser. Then I proceeded to put my sweaty clothes on a plastic loop, which is thrown into a plastic bin.
So, here I am 8:00 am and im exhausted, without a scooter to get to class which starts at 8:50. So I slowly walk to my philosophy class, which took about 30 minutes due to the slowed pace and cold conditions. I show up in class about 20 minutes early and sit down in the back and decide to close my eyes for a second. Next thing I know, the class is midway through the lecture! So, I pull out my laptop and I think to myself, wow great, this is plastic. So I put it away and turn to my friend and ask him to email the notes to me. Him, being the nice guy he is, emails the notes to me and takes care of that problem.
The class bell rings and everyone scrambles out. I casually make my way out and begin my journey to math. Midway through this journey I realize, like many college students do, that I really don’t feel like going to class! So I continue my walk, passing Van Vleck, and just head to the stadium to go to sleep. I arrive at the stadium and go straight to the locker room and pass out on the couches. I proceed to sleep for 4 or more hours without any plastic interference. I wake up to go to our meetings that begin at 2. We do sit in plastic chairs in front plastic tables for our meetings, where we are forced to take notes with plastic pens into our plastic binders, while watching a plastic projector cast an image on a plastic whiteboard. So yes, there was another epic fail.
Moving on, after 2 hours of ridiculously monotonous meetings, we have to get dressed for practice. It was at this point where I came to a conclusion that it really is impossible to go without plastic, especially in football. My helmet, my shoulder pads, my thigh pads, my jersey, my pants, my ankle braces, my shoes, my gloves, the tackling dummies, the tackling pads, the indoor goalpost, and pretty much everything is made from plastic! And yes, I went to practice!
To make a long story short, I simply gave up after practice. I double scooted home, sat down on the couch, turned on my T.V and my Xbox, went on my laptop, blasted music, brushed my teeth, and went to bed.
Yes I’ve come to realize that I use plastic way more than I have too. However, I would also like to point out that plastic has an extremely integral part of our lives. To be honest, he innumerable and beneficial uses of plastic outweigh any environmental concern that we may have. Of course there are sometimes when plastic could be replaced with wood or metal, but that is simply a capitalistic problem, in which plastic is ten times cheaper than wood or metal. Until people are more environmentally concerned, or until something drastic happens, I feel as if people will not go out of their way to change their habits to inconvenience themselves. I know this view seems pessimistic, but I’m a realist. What I have learned from this class is that every individual effort to save our environment counts, so I can encourage my friends and family to be more eco-friendly!
-Darius Feaster signing out
-You can find me Peter Boger's 11am discussion on Fridays