It Turns Out Our University Is Made Almost Entirely of Plastic

Plastics Challenge - Mindy Preston, Sect. 307 (TA: Tiffany Grade)

As an extremely stubborn person willing to do ridiculous things for the flimsiest of reasons, I was excited to see the description of the the Plastics Challenge. I immediately wrote up a list of things I'd have to do without, or try to substitute, on No Plastics Day:

• mechanical pencils
• pens
• elastic
• backpacks
• bicycles with brake cables or derailleurs. Bike helmets too, and lights, and fenders, and...
• raingear
• clothing with synthetic fabrics in it, including every pair of gloves I own
• shoes with plastic grommets or zippers or synthetic insoles
• plastic folders
• softcover books
• public soap and toilet paper dispensers
• pretty much all carpets
• many tables and chairs
• anything soft and cushy (almost all cushions are made from plastic foams)
• my refrigerator and oven
• anything electronic (printed circuit boards are made of plastic)
• wires, and anything that uses them (they have plastic insulators around them)
• my student ID, credit cards, drivers license, and other plastic identifiers

Preparation

With this list in mind, I took some preparatory measures for No Plastics Day. I went through all my clothing and found the least synthetic items I owned. I was able to find shirts and pants made entirely of cotton and wool. I have a pair of leather shoes that just had a pair of plastic shoelace ends, so I snipped those off and tied off the ends. I put some leftovers in a metal bowl, covered it with aluminum foil, and put them out on the porch to stay cool outside the refrigerator. I put some cardboard down over hardwood floor to substitute for my mattress, got another box to use as a pillow, and rounded up some old candles to use for illumination. I couldn't find a blanket that wasn't made of synthetic fabric, so I took the wool lining out of an old coat to use for a blanket. I took a cake of soap and put it in a cotton handkerchief, for hand-washing in places with plastic soap dispensers, and grabbed a roll of toilet paper to carry around. I got ready to walk around all day, rather than bike or take the bus.

I couldn't prepare away my need for a few items without spending money, which I wasn't willing to do. I don't own any all-natural undergarments, so I wore the least-synthetic of these I owned. I need to carry my cell phone because some members of my family are in delicate health, but I did not answer the phone for anyone other than family during No Plastics Day. I couldn't find gloves that didn't have a synthetic fabric lining, so I wore partly-plastic gloves all day rather than lose my hands to frostbite. The coat I wore is either 100% wool with metal accents or 100% scary polyester from the 1970s; I strongly suspect it's the former, but I can't prove it. (That coat also causes random strangers to yell "Hey, Sgt. Pepper!!!" at me, but that's probably not relevant to the Plastics Challenge.)

No Plastics Day

I started No Plastics Day at 8:00 on Sunday night by changing into my plastic-light clothes, lighting some candles, and trying to read a hardcover book. I couldn't get enough light from the candles, so instead I sat around in the dark, playing the bass and then playing Go by myself, waiting to get tired enough to go to sleep. (I also drank a lot of brandy, mostly because it was in a glass bottle. Hey, I'm of age, I can drink alone in the dark if I want.) Eventually I got tired enough to lie down, which cued the third worst night of sleep I have ever had. The floor was really cold, and cardboard is in no way an awesome substitute for a comfortable mattress. My cardboard-box-pillow seemed awesome at first, but it got pretty old after a couple of hours. I was excited when I woke up for the 3,237st time and saw that, finally, it was light out.

I started my day by brushing my teeth with my finger (plastic toothbrush, but my toothpaste comes in a metal tube), looking sadly at my plastic refrigerator, and going out for coffee. I bought everything with cash, but the barista used a plastic cash register to ring me up. While she was hitting buttons, I thought about what constitutes "use" of plastic. Is it cheating if someone else uses it for me? What about if I can't help using it? The lights in the shop were on; music was coming out of a plastic speaker. There's likely PVC plumbing somewhere in the line of water that leads from the water table to the espresso machine. Even if I'm sitting on a wooden stool at a wooden table, drinking coffee out of a ceramic mug and eating a fresh-made sandwich off a real plate, there's still a real sense in which I'm using plastic. Over the course of the day, I looked at a lot of plastic things that convey information; for example, clocks, billboards, and shop window displays. By looking at them, I'm definitely using them, but how can one abstain from that?

Once I went to class, it was even harder to avoid using plastic. My first lecture had wooden seats and tables, but the lecturer uses a projector and a sound system - all pure plastic. The walls are covered in foam noise suppressant. My second lecture had plastic seats and tables; I could have stood awkwardly for the whole power lecture, but instead I sat and balanced my notes on my lap. I spent the middle portion of my day at the Historical Society, which has very little plastic except for its carpets - of course I used them extensively, to wipe the snow and ice off my shoes. I spent a few hours reading there, safely away from most plastic in the renovated Reading Room.

I returned home at about 4:30, and immediately had to clean up some cat vomit. I threw it into a plastic-bag-lined plastic garbage can. I will fully admit that I didn't even think about doing anything else with it, despite having several more hours of No Plastic Day. It would be possible to get a metal trash can and some kind of non-plastic liner, but even if I did, my trash would eventually have to go into the City of Madison's plastic refuse bins for collection. In this case, substitution seems kind of pointless.

After eating my delicious porch-refrigerated leftovers, which I was very glad to see hadn't frozen, I headed back to campus for a club meeting. We met in a plastic-carpeted room with plastic chairs and plastic tables, plastic whiteboards on the walls and plastic whiteboard markers to match. Most people brought their plastic laptops. I had to sharpen my non-plastic pencil, and so I shaved some wood into the plastic-lined plastic garbage bin. Our meeting lasted until 8:00, at which point I was very happy to conclude No Plastics Day by walking over to College Library and checking my e-mail for the first time in a whole day.

I was able to take many steps to avoid plastic use in my own home, but once I ventured out into the broader world, I was done for. The University, especially, presented me plastic at every turn. I expect most corporate environments would be the same - when you're shopping for cost-effective furniture in huge quantities, plastic makes a lot of sense. Considering that most worrying effects are those of chronic exposure, though, seeing plastic everywhere is worrying indeed.