Katie Cottrell's Attempt Of a Day Without Plastics

In order to prepare for this day, I made the decision to avoid plastics in my regular day routine without making plans a day before to avoid them. My own challenge was to see what kind of decisions I could make in order to avoid the mass amounts of plastic in my dorm room and throughout day.

I decided not to set my usual alarm on my phone, which has plastic in it, and instead used my roommate as my own personal alarm clock. My plan had worked and I awoke around 10 o’clock which was enough time to get ready before my 11 o’clock environmental studies discussion. But my day wasn’t that easy. I noticed that half the things I use for my morning routine such as makeup, face wash, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant etc. were all contained in plastic. Basically, it meant I just majorly failed the challenge all within the few minutes I had been awake. But I accepted the defeat and decided that I would avoid plastics the rest of the day by making conscious decisions to use other materials such as ceramics, glass, paper, etc. The one triumph of my morning was being able to avoid using my plastic mug and using my ceramic mug to make myself my morning tea.

My next fail of the challenge came when I had to put on my coat to go to class. My coat is filled with plastic doodads from buttons to zippers. I also failed with the use of my backpack, which was covered in clips, zippers, buttons and more plastic bits and pieces. I knew there were going to be even more challenges erupting when I went to class and had to face plastics. My first offense was sitting in the plastic chairs in my Environ St. discussion – opps. At least I used regular pencils instead of the lead pencils, and also only used looseleaf. The challenge of using plastics during my classes was barely doable. However, I did triumph a little I suppose by using regular pencils and just looseleaf.

When i got back to my dorm after class I was very hungry and in need of some food. The simplest solution would be to open by plastic refrigerator and take out one of the many plastic contained items in it, or I could use my snack container which is a plastic container holding my dry snacks that are also contained in plastic. But I refused to crack that easy, so I grabbed some food at Gordon’s with my friend. Yet another challenge occurred when I arrived at Gordon’s because all the bowls and trays were made of plastic. I opted out of using a tray and just got fruit on a ceramic plate to avoid the use of plastics. What I realized though was that Gordon’s was a plastics wonderland, from plastic trays, to plastic bowls, to plastic cups, to plastic silverware, to plastic wrapped food at Eds. For dinner I went to Gordon’s again deciding to get the grilled cheese and a salad all on a regular plate with no tray use. I did fail with my drink choice, which was water from my BPA free camelback – but at least its BPA free right?

After spending an entire day trying to avoid the use of plastics I definitely underestimated the difficulty of this challenge. I found it exceptionally hard being that I’m a freshman in the dorms. This is because as I mentioned before Gordon’s is a plastics wonderland and my dorm isn’t any better as one could imagine from the pictures above. Not only is being a freshman in the dorms tough for the plastics challenge, but also just being a girl in general. This is because all the makeup products are contained in some sort of plastic. Plastic is literally everywhere, from the light switches, to mechanical pencils and pens, binders, basically all electronics, and any sort of protective covering for phones, makeup, and food. Although I failed at the challenge majorly it taught me a lot. It made me realize that going a whole day without plastics is nearly impossible. Of course there are options to avoiding plastics which was the main challenge of my day. Instead of using binders there are notebooks, instead of lead pens there are classic #2 pencils, and instead of backpacks there are cloth bags. These are just a few examples that I came up with, but of course there are more out there. Overall this plastic challenges kicked my butt, which was a lesson in itself. It was truly astonishing to realize how much plastic was used in our everyday society, and it made me more conscious to look and buy more materials that were more plastic-free.