Grandpaparazzi's Neighborhood

11/01/2018

One Month of Plastic Waste

Just to see how we are contributing to the problem in our everyday lives, we decided to collect our 'single-use' plastic waste for one month.

These photos show the amount of 'single use' plastic waste that the two of us accumulated during the month of October 2018.

It weighed 6.3 pounds (101 ounces).

Spread out to a single layer, it covered 30 square feet.

Extended to 1 year, it would weigh 74.3 pounds and cover 353 square feet.

If everyone in the United States (350 million) generated the same amount per person, the total would weigh 13.0 BILLION pounds and cover 1.42 MILLION acres or 2,217 square miles.

We had nearly no choice but to create this accumulation of non-degradeable rubbish, when we bought the products we regularly use.

This is why the world has this BIG problem!

(Yes, I know there are many other BIG problems facing the world; this just happens to be the one that caught my attention. :)

10/01/2018

Plastic

This is not meant to alarm anyone or otherwise cause angst or distress...

There was a segment about plastic waste on PBS the other night. So I did a quick search and learned :
In the last 60 years the world has produced approximately 1.1 metric tons (2400 pounds) of plastic for every man, woman, child and infant alive today. 79% of that has accumulated in landfills or litter, much of which ends up in the oceans. There is more and more -- the annual production of plastic resin and fiber produced has been doubling every 15 years.

My mind stumbles at the thought of my very own ton of plastic waste piled up in my back yard.

I am now trying to avoid purchasing single-use plastic items: straws, cups, packaging, ziplok bags, take-away containers, medicine bottles...on and on.

It is hard to do that - it is so ubiquitous. Today I bought a gallon of milk in a throw-away plastic jug. I would have paid 4 times as much if I had chosen half-gallons of milk in paper cartons. Maybe I should have.

For the month of October, I am going to accumulate all the plastic waste for our household, to see what it looks like (if there is enough room in our back yard. :)
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Reference:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/plastic-produced-recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment/
http://www.theworldcounts.com/themes/our_environment