Plastic is EVERYWHERE

Meghan Schulze

Peter-309

My first thought was “How am I going to make this as easy as possible?”. I was going to pick a day, most likely a Sunday, where I was going to lay in bed, stare at the ceiling, not touch my phone, computer or TV for the entire day and call it a wrap. And so it began, my Plastic-less Sunday and before I could even begin, I was already failing. Laying in my bed I quickly began to contemplate how I was going to get off my lofted bed with no step ladder. I then decided to shimmy down my bed landing smack on my floor right next to my box of plastic garbage bags. I then went to open the fridge and realized that I couldn’t open my fridge because it was in fact plastic. What I predicted to be my lazy plastic-less Sunday was starting to cause some major frustration. So, “Screw breakfast” I thought and I decided that instead I was going to go brush my teeth and wash my face. 

 As soon as I went to grab for my toothbrush I realized yet again that my enemy (plastic) was staring directly at me. My eyes quickly turned to my face wash and I realized that the top of it was plastic. At this point I had about given up. It was only 11AM and I realized that there was no way that I was going to able to avoid plastic for an entire 24 hours. For the rest of my day, rather than avoiding plastic all together I instead began to document and list all the plastics I used on a daily basis. 

 After compiling my list I noticed that virtually everything I used, from my phone and computer to my Wiscard and Credit cards were all made of plastic. There was truly no way of avoiding it. This whole thing really made me, for once sit down and focus on the things I use every day and their impact on my environment, on OUR environment. True, we hear about it on the news and in magazines and in the newspaper but many of us never think about our individual behaviors and how they have the potential to ruin what we have. My day, or rather few hours without plastic truly made me recognize the fact that I need to reduce my impact and really think about what I’m using and how it could harm the environment.