My Plastics Challenge - A Failed Attempt to Live a Day Without Plastics by George Reistad

MORNING

So to start things off, the plastics challenge was an absolutely epic fail, at least for me. Now to shed a little light on the situation and also to let myself off the hook a bit, I didn’t exactly pick an ideal day to conduct this challenge. My procrastination caught up to me in this regard and made completing the challenge successfully all but impossible.

This weekend I went home to Milwaukee to spend some time with my family. I had to come back early today (Sunday the 5^th) to go to a meeting and then go to work. The first instance of failure came at 8:20am when my alarm from my cell phone, infused with plastic, went off and woke me up. I then went upstairs and disabled the alarm system… that was encased in plastic and had plastic button. I neglected to go outside and get the Journal Sentinel, because it was wrapped in a plastic. However, even with this moment of awareness, my morning was off to a terrible start. I then took a shower and used a bar of Lever 2000 for my body and abstained from washing my hair, as the shampoo was in a plastic bottle. 

When I got out I decided to let my hair curl up naturally from being wet instead of using product. I then brushed my teeth with a washcloth to avoid using a toothbrush, because the only ones at my disposal were made of plastic. I then got dressed and again flunked the challenge because my shirt contained polyester, which is a derivative of plastic.

Once I got dressed, I proceeded to pack my bag to catch the badger bus back to Madison. My duffel and book bag both contained polyester. I got a ride from my father, whose car contains elements containing plastic, and boarded the bus. The seats were anchored to the floor with plastic supports and it being a 2-hour drive, I definitely sat down in them.

AFTERNOON

When we got off the bus, I went to a meeting at the red gym for WUD’s Alternative Winter Breaks and we talked logistics of the trips. We also were served snacks on plastic plates so I opted out of that by putting my food in a napkin. After the meeting I went to work next door at the union.

I work as a catron for UW’s Catering service at Memorial Union. This particular evening we were putting together the fifth night of The Union’s annual Tudor Dinners, where people come in and enjoy food and drink and listen to the sounds of Madison’s Philharmonic Chorus throughout the evening. The first thing I was designated to do was to put out the water glasses at the place settings in The Great Hall. The Cups were made of glass and were served on trays of cork and plastic. So yet again, I chalked up another encounter with plastic that was unavoidable. I then made breadbaskets for the tables. This involved no plastic components to my knowledge, as it used wheat and white rolls, wicker-like baskets, and cloth napkins. The rolls themselves were contained on a metal cart. I was assigned with two others to be a host and lead people to the seats they were assigned by their tickets. This process did not require the use of plastics either, as I just escorted people to their seats for a half hour or so.

After this we served salads to the tables. The bowls were made of plastic. I believe this brings my total number of encounters with plastics on the day to at least nine that I can recall. After serving salads we cleared salad plates and salad forks, which were ceramic and metal. We then served the main entrée, which was steak, mashed potatoes, asparagus, and a whiskey pepper sauce. The plates were ceramic but were topped with plastic covers to keep them warm. However, I never actually touched the plastic tops as the people taking them from the hotboxes did this for us and we proceeded to carry them out to the tables. So I’ll say I avoided plastic use here. After serving we provided refreshments like coffee, iced tea, and milk. The coffee was served in plastic coffee pitchers but the milk cartons and iced tea were housed in paper and glass containers respectively and then served in glasses. The rest of the serving experience saw an impressive evasion of plastics as I cleared all ceramic, metal or glassware. I then helped to serve the Figgie pudding, which was prepared on a metal rack, served with a metal spoon, and placed on a ceramic plate. The Hard sauce that topped the pudding was ladled from a metal pitcher using a metal spoon. After dinner was over and the clearing process began was when the real plastic encounters at work began. We go through the tables with assignments to clear particular dishes and almost all the racks we use for plates, silverware, and glasses are plastic. However, I was assigned to clean out the coffee makers, which involved throwing away the paper (or cloth?) filters in metal baskets and refilling the chambers with hot water. The coffee makers themselves were also metal. I then began to clear wine glasses and, as stated before, had to place them in plastic racks. All in all, work could have had me use much more plastic than I did that day. However, there is still pretty prolific plastic use at my catering job because of its durability and inexpensiveness.

EVENING

When I got off of work, I went home, and being exhausted sat on the couch and relaxed for a few minutes. I then made a cheese quesadilla because I hadn’t been grocery shopping in a while and didn’t have many food items in the house. I had my roommate get the tortilla, cheese, and sour cream for me because they were all in plastic, re-sealable containers. I then realized this step was kind of pointless because I had to use my microwave anyway, which contained plastic components, and I was tired of recruiting my roommate’s help because if I kept doing that I don’t know where it would have stopped.

After eating my quesadilla (which was delicious) I started work on typing up my account of my day attempting the plastics challenge. I worked on it for about 45 minutes and then watched my friend play NBA 2K11 and poured bourbon over ice (in a glass cup) ;). Shortly after that, at around 1:50am, I brushed my teeth, again using my plastic toothbrush and laid in my bed, on which on the mattress is wrapped in a PVC cover because I got it from the basement of my apartment and didn’t know who had used it last or what they had done with it (yuck). At around 2am I fell asleep.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I don’t think I put 100% effort into the plastic challenge because I picked an absolutely awful day to attempt it and I also did not implement my original plan of meticulously planning out ways to maneuver around plastics use. Even so, I don’t think it should be so, for lack of a better word, impossible to avoid plastics in your daily life. Plastics are so engrained in our society that they are present in nearly every application of what we do. From work to leisure, plastics follow you wherever you go, and play a big part in how we live. I personally believe that plastics make many things much more convenient for people. However, society should have an alternative to using plastics if they don’t want to use them. The plastics challenge opened my eyes to how widespread plastics use is in American life.