“We’ve long cautioned consumers to avoid extreme heat and cooling for plastics, to discard scratched and worn plastics and we feel like this (study) validates one of our many concerns,” she says.

According to the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, this is a problem that can be solved.

• 

Meet my organic potato. Potatoes are among the Dirty Dozen foods most likely to have pesticide residues. They are one of the foods we should always buy organic.

My husband, who buys the groceries in our family, is a sucker for a sale. He has also agreed to buy only organic potatoes. Combined, organic and sale resulted in his bringing home the potatoes you see above. If you read closely, you will see that the potato comes with cooking instructions: “Microwave in 7 minutes.” Yes, that’s an instruction to microwave in the plastic shrinkwrap.

Those of us who pay attention to the issue of organic do so because we want to choose what is best for our families. So, is my organic potato better for my family?

What’s Right with Organic

Chemical pesticides and fertilizers can leave residues, and antibiotics and growth hormones in milk and meat can be passed on to humans. Organic standards prohibit or limit those potentially harmful inputs. Canada Organic Regime (COR) and USDA National Organic Program (NOP) provide standards and certification to those standards.

In short, an organic potato should not poison you or add to your chemical body burden. This is a very big plus.

What’s Wrong with Organic

Threats to Clean Food. While USDA certified organic foods still can’t intentionally include GMOs (genetically modified organisms), the trend in the corporate organic industry is toward “co-existence”—which will quite likely lead to GMOs in organic foods in the future. That’s not an issue with my organic potato, but this and so much else about the compromises of corporate organic lead me to be suspicious of the organic brand even while I support the extreme importance of clean food. Within the organic movement, there are coalitions of farmers and organizations working to maintain trust in organic by making sure organic food is clean food. I ask myself how far the grower of my organic potato pushed against the rules.

Pointless Packaging. While I may see petroleum-based shrinkwrap as pointless packaging, I do understand that this keeps the higher priced organic potatoes separate from the non-organic potatoes. I suspect adding the packaging also adds to the price. Yes, I understand that pricey organics give them a different demographic. First rule of marketing: know your audience. I can’t help but think that the plastic wrap doesn’t endear organic potatoes to the target market. Maybe that’s why they were sitting in the bin so long that they had to be discounted when entertained husbands could pick them up as conversation pieces. This has nothing to do with standards or certification and everything to do with marketing and sustainability.

Microwaving Plastic. In general, it’s best not to store or heat foods in plastic. The toxins that can be found in plastic softeners (phthalates) and in some ingredients (BPA or bisphenol-A), make it difficult to know which plastics are stable and non-toxic and which plastics present a potential health hazard. You have plenty of non-plastic choices to store and heat food.

Heating plastic can degrade the chemical bond. That chemical reaction could then leave toxins in the plastic that can be released. In a microwave, the particular dangers come with fatty foods cooked at high temperatures. Even the most conservative advice urges us not to let plastics, like thin plastic wrap, touch foods in the microwave. ~“Plastic-free Products: Feeding”

Again, this has nothing to do with organic standards. Despite the USDA’s refusal to say organic is better for you, most people buy organic because they want to avoid toxins in their food and in the environment. Those who care about toxins or have paid attention to the harm toxins can cause are more likely to limit their exposure in packaging and preparation as well as in the production of food before it reaches their kitchen.

A label won’t guarantee that food is good for you. I don’t have any idea whether an organic potato wrapped in plastic and microwaved is better for you than a tv dinner of processed organic potato flakes, but I’m thinking there are better choices than both of those. Whole foods stored and prepared without exposure to potential toxins are the best choice for your family.

We ate the organic potatoes, but we tore off the plastic first and created just a little bit more solid waste to send to the curb. Alas.

• 

Is it a bag or is it a jellyfish? Sea life eat it to find out.

Is the logical conclusion to outlaw plastic? Probably not. My quick answer is that a ban would be fine with me, but I understand that we have built areas of our material culture around plastic. We would need a transition period to (and back to) other materials.

It may be that we have finally entered that transition period. I wrote Wednesday about those already saying NO! to plastics. And, plastic news is moving quickly. Even since I wrote Wednesday, Australia has a deal with retailers to phase out BPA (bisphenol-A) from baby bottles and the California Assembly passed a bill also to ban BPA in baby bottles. If you are concerned about the issues and want to be informed of changes, be sure to follow the work of plastic pollution activists.

Quick! What Are the Problems with Plastic?

Toxic
The basic idea: the processing and many of the products are toxic.

Toxins can be found in plastic byproducts, plastic softeners (phthalates), some ingredients (BPA), and some situational instabilities in the materials after production (meaning some plastics will break down in heat or when in contact with certain chemicals). Some of the harm is immediate, and some of the toxins build up over time. The result of “pre-polluted babies” (a phrase used in a report from the U.S. President’s Cancer Panel in May) has alarmed many into action.

Non-renewable
The basic idea: any resource that isn’t replanted (tree, corn) or recycled (water) isn’t sustainable.

Oil and gas as global power isn’t in dispute. The news gives us evidence of this on so many levels. Any business that can’t sustain its supply of raw materials, though, has to evolve or die. This probably explains why so many oil execs have gone into the algae business lately.

We can certainly expect more algae plastic in the future. When I see biodegradable plastic spoons made from corn, I wonder if I’m seeing something that is closer to the structure of rayon (turn bamboo or tree into cellulose goo through chemical treatment then pack it together like a very tight papier mache) than to petro-plastic spoons. If a renewable material is used as feedstock to make plastic, it is still has to be made into the same toxic chemicals with the same issues at each stage in the distilling (fractioning) process. So, making plastic from renewable materials doesn’t make it all nice and greenwashy clean, it just makes it a renewable source of potential toxins.

Peak Oil
The basic idea: since oil is a non-renewable resource, it is finite. We will use it up. Peak oil is the point at which we probably have already passed peak production—think, now. The reality is probably that as there are fewer cheap ways to extract oil we will resort to the more expensive and environmentally damaging ways to squeeze out every drop.

The question of oil and plastic will solve itself over time as we deal with ever-diminishing oil. Eventually, we will deal with diminishing natural gas as well.

Single-use
The basic idea: we put a lot of energy, time, and money into single-use products like straws, bags, and disposable diapers only to toss them away after an hour or so. It makes more sense to put that energy, time, and money into a product that can be reused—unless your profit depends on planned obsolescence.

The issue isn’t just the nonsensical action of throwing away a barely used item but the issue becomes one of economics with the cost of dealing with solid waste (an issue every local solid waste department struggles with), space (same local solid waste departments), and environment (for anyone who prefers beach made of sand rather than plastic bits).

Happiness
The basic idea: does plastic make you more happy?

Bhutan decided to measure what really mattered, so they have a Gross National Happiness measurement rather than Gross National Product. Included in their efforts to boost Gross National Happiness is a ban on plastic bags, which has been in place since 1999 and they are still working to enforce effectively. Recognition is one step; enforcement (or perhaps education so the recognition spreads) is another. What a great measure of what counts, though.

The Answer to Plastic Problems

I don’t claim to have all of the answers or even very good answers, but I do have a sense that we can’t just make minor tweaks around the edges of our plastic-enhanced lifestyles. What is sneaking up on us while our lives are turned to plastic are toxins in pre-polluted babies, oceans of plastic, destruction of land and sea, landfills full of baby feces, and so on.

Small changes won’t save us. We need big changes. Big changes are completely intimidating and tend to shut us down into inaction (yes, I’m speaking for myself). So, we need to inventory our lives and ask where we can make changes. Then DO IT! Once you make a big change, it’s exciting and empowering. You can make more and join with others who are making their own changes. It’s important not to make holier-than-thou judgments if you support others making their own changes (instead of your changes). Each of us will have to figure out where and how to remove plastic from our lives.

Need a place to start? FOOD. Do not use soft plastics to store or cook food. There. Simple. What’s next?

Plastic: Get a plastic bag at the mall
Alternative: Take a reusable bag to the mall
Change: Skip the mall

Plastic: Use a plastic, disposable diaper
Alternative: Use reusable diapers that are “like disposables”
Change: Use a low-impact reusable diaper or elimination communication

Plastic: Buy a shelf-full of single-purpose, plastic games for baby
Alternative: Buy a shelf-full of single-purpose, wooden games for baby
Change: Just buy a few wooden, silk, natural rubber toys for baby that require only imagination to become another game

Plastic: Buy 3 strollers for different purposes
Alternative: Buy one stroller
Change: Skip the stroller and wear the baby

To find the changes that work for you, inventory your house. What are the

• plastic choices,
• the alternatives, and
• the big changes?

Start with one.

Image © Alexey Poprugin | Dreamstime.com

• 

See plastic bags around the world at Guardian UK.

Shifting Costs Back and Forth

Externalizing costs is a clever strategy. When business off-loads cost of dumping waste or cleaning up the environment or treating medical conditions caused by their toxic stew, they have successfully externalized costs in order to realize greater profit. Nice strategy, eh?

Efforts to encourage lower impact products or just a reduction in stuff altogether are often a recognition that those costs belong with the producers and users rather than with those poor or unfortunate enough to be incidentally dumped on in the process of making and distributing stuff.

Once the costs of stuff like plastic become more clear, we’re more willing to change. Once we find out that babies are born toxic, for example, and we freak out saying, “How could this have happened?” and we find that we are better able to hear our options. We become more willing to consider changes in our collective lifestyles that will either internalize costs (choose a more expensive but less toxic alternative, like buying a hybrid car) or remove the costs altogether (stop doing the thing that requires the stuff choice, like walking, biking, or taking the bus or train instead).

Actually, I think the big changes, the regulated and legislated changes, come when we can show the costs very clearly. That’s when those to whom the costs have been externalized start lobbying for change. The people paying medical bills, the cities paying for waste pick up, the cancer centers tracing clear lines from product to patient, the clean-up crews combing beaches for plastics and the dead birds and sea creatures who eat plastics—these are the effective voices in making changes. When the shock of the costs becomes too much, we push for change justified in terms of measurements and costs. We change in order to save money now and later.

If that’s what it takes, that’s fine by me.

Who is saying NO to plastics?

My lists aren’t meant to be comprehensive. This is a sample to show that the tide is turning against plastics.

Plastic Bottles
Local rejection of plastic bags and plastic bottles is one of the big stories recently. There are a lot of reasons to ban plastic bottles. For some, the issue is molecular migration of BPA and other toxins from container to contents. For others, the issue is single-use bottles in landfill. Still others are more concerned with water privatization and the bottled water dependence that follows.

• North Carolina banned plastic bottles in landfill. They must be recycled.
• Concord, Massachusetts, has banned the sale of bottled water, but not everyone is happy about it.
• Bundanoon, New South Wales, Australia banned the sale of bottled water.
• The University of Ottawa has been working to make the campus more public water friendly in anticipation of a bottled water ban.
• Toronto will implement a ban on water bottles in 2011, and guidelines to reduce bottled water use are already in place.
• Others just discourage the use of plastic bottles or bottled water. March 11th is Bottled Water Free Day in Canada.
• The city of Hamilton, Ontario, opted for a public education campaign rather than a ban.

More from Inside the Bottle, Ban the Bottle, and the Polaris Institute.

Bisphenol-A (BPA)
Both Health Canada and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have declared BPA a chemical of concern. As concern about this toxic plastic ingredient spreads, more cautions and bans follow. A group of 60 scientists urge a worldwide ban on BPA.

• Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Denmark have banned BPA in food containers for young children, and calls for bans are moving through Europe.
• BPA baby bottle ban failed in the California Assembly this week, but the vote was close and bill may be revived.
• Many U.S. states have banned BPA, including Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin. Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection recommended a ban this month and New York’s Senate and Assembly unanimously passed a ban last week. This story is on the move, and more bans will follow.
• A U.S. ban and regulation can’t come soon enough for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Yesterday they filed suit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration “for its failure to act on a petition to ban the use of bisphenol A (BPA) in food packaging, food containers, and other materials likely to come into contact with food.”

Plastic Bags
Plastic bags blow around. They blow into trees, and they blow into the sea, where they look like jellyfish and are eaten by sea creatures. Images of plastic bags are easy to find and difficult to forget.

This should be the easiest of these changes, since the costs are clear both to the consumer and to the environment, and the solution is simple. Plastic bags are so easy to replace, since a cloth bag will do. (Yes, remember to wash your reusable bag, since a study showed that bags can get dirty. Hello! Then WASH it, dear Liza.)

• Washington, DC, has reduced plastic bag use with a tax. Higher cost has meant less use.
• The city of Bankok has created as an incentive a 45-day discount if shoppers bring their own bag.
• China does not allow retailers to give out free plastic bags, and their reasoning is that this saves oil.
• California is on track for a statewide plastic bag ban despite their (perhaps temporary) failure to ban BPA in baby bottles. Follow progress of the ban on The Bag Monster blog.
• In a different turn of events, Walmart is experimenting with banning plastic bags in some stores.

These are steps in helping us move beyond waste. Friday I’ll write more about that big change.

Great organizations doing good work on anti-plastic activism

• Plastic Pollution Coalition
• Rise Above Plastics
• Think Beyond Plastics
• 5 Gyres
• Trash Patch

• 

In the film The Graduate, the main character, Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), graduates from college and returns to his parents’ house for a celebration. His parents’ friends are interested in asking him—and telling him—about his future. One of these friends, Mr. McGuire, pulls Ben aside.

“Come on with me for a minute. I want to talk to you.” Once they are alone outside, he leans in close to tell Ben, “I just want to say one word to you, just one word.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you listening?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Plastics.”
“Exactly how do you mean?”
“There is a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?”
“Yes, I will.”

I thought about it.

Plastics were a temporary future, a 20th-century aberration. Plastics are becoming part of our past as the late 20th-century becomes so obvious as a time of excess whose many debts and externalized costs will take a long time to pay off.

We start to pay that debt now.

In reaction to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I’ve heard calls for boycotts. How far would we boycott, though? Are we prepared to go all the way? About 4.6% of U.S. petroleum is used to make plastic. Demand is expected to increase in Canada and in the U.S. for petroleum products.

But, don’t we recycle plastic? Doesn’t that mean we use less of the non-renewable resources? Yes, sort of. Less than 1% of plastic bags are recycled, and about 25% of plastic bottles are recycled. So, yes, some plastics can be recycled, but there is a fairly low expectation that they will be. Most municipal solid waste is still just garbage. We may notice more what goes into landfill, but the biggest garbage dump in the world is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch covers millions of square miles of plastic bits breaking into smaller and smaller plastic bits just moving with the currents. When the plastics do break down, they leave toxic chemicals that enter the food chain, which eventually leads to us.

Recycling isn’t preventing the massive plastic dump and the toxic stew that follows.

Wait, What about Cleaner Energy Sources

With massive oil spills and smaller oil spills, more people are asking if it is really necessary to take such risks. Some seem almost desperate in their defense of petrochemical products, unwilling to consider that we might have to think beyond oil and gas.

We don’t have to turn to oil, though, right? We can squeeze every drop out of tar sands. Plastics can be made from oil or from gas. It’s all part of the same process. If we are to believe natural gas advertisements and advocates, natural gas is much better for the environment. I think they are referring to a tidily bounded portion of the lifecycle of natural gas, though. What I hear about natural gas as the clean fossil fuel does not fit with the picture I saw as I watched Gasland this past week. This is a heart-breaking documentary about the consequences of natural gas exploration. If you haven’t heard on the news about people across the U.S. setting light to the water out of their faucets, you need to see it to believe it. Devastating costs of petrochemical and mineral extraction have to be internalized in order for us to be honest about the real impacts of our wreckless lifestyles of stuff.

Another issue that will slap us in the face soon enough is that petrochemical resources are finite. We will (or have) hit the peak of oil and gas production, then further extraction will become more difficult and more expensive. We may find that the economics help us to rethink our dependence of plastics and other petrochem products.

Eventually, desperate defense will give way to change.

The End of Plastic

“This is the Petrochemical Age.”

No. I choose to lessen my dependence on oil now. It has been a long process, and it is ongoing, but I won’t give in. Great bloggers like Plastic Manners and Fake Plastic Fish are chronicling their efforts to give up plastic. It may feel overwhelming at first, but it’s possible, and you aren’t alone in your efforts to find another way to live.

The movement against single-use plastic is growing. There are many organizations dedicated exclusively or in part to plastic pollution education, reduction, alternatives, clean up, and so on. They provide guidance on lessening plastic dependence and suggest actions to make bigger change as well.

Beyond the Age of Stuff and Waste

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about all of the great natural and non-toxic products parents can use to replace children’s products that are made out of plastic—natural fiber diapers, wooden cars, natural rubber chew toys, stainless steel straws, and silicone popsicle molds. These are easy changes that don’t interrupt our lifestyles but just replace one product with another.

I think we need interruption, though.

We don’t just need alternatives but a complete change of approach. We need to think beyond the age of stuff and waste.

Image © Bluechrome | Dreamstime.com

• 

When the U.S. CPSIA banned certain phthalates in children’s sleeping products, I think they had in mind primarily sucking products. Pajamas count here, too, since there could conceivably be soft plastics in surface decorations or in the skid-preventing patterns on footie pajamas. Kids can suck those, but they aren’t designed to be sucked. Basically, because very young children put so much in their mouths, everything made for children under 3 becomes a suckable item.

It’s not a bad thing to avoid plastics in pillows, blankets, and all of the other sleep products for kids, but it is just silly to consider that an organic cotton blanket is subject to testing for soft plastics. It is not difficult to see why manufacturers and retailers who are concerned about toxic chemicals in children’s products are still unhappy about the U.S. law.

Still, I’m using the CPSIA as my guide this week for switching from products that contain plastics to plastic-free products for feeding, sleeping, and toys for children.

Easy Plastic-free Changes

As with my plastic-free feeding recommendations, the easiest changes we can make are to switch to plastic-free products that do much the same thing as the plastic products. These are the painless changes.

Vinyl-free bedding

Whatever our blankets and pillows breathe out, we breathe in all night. Because of the sweet, carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting smell of vinyl chloride, it is particularly important to get vinyl out of bedding.

A lot of parents are concerned about leaking diapers and wet beds. There are a couple of ways to approach this problem. Use a diaper that doesn’t leak or use a mattress pad. A vinyl-free mattress pad is a start, but it isn’t necessarily plastic-free, since a lot of waterproof items still have microfibers or polyurethane laminate or both. The truly plastic-free, waterproof mattress pad is wool. A wool changing pad will work if your baby doesn’t move much during the night, or a larger wool blanket can but put under the sheets to prevent leaking into the mattress.

Baby blankets of 100% cotton or 100% soft, merino wool are naturally absorbent. They will keep your baby warm enough while still breathing to avoid the wrapped-in-plastic feeling in the morning.

Pajamas

As with blankets, natural materials are the least toxic choice for your sleeping child. You don’t need soft plastic printing or decorations on the pajamas, you don’t need microfiber for absorbency, you don’t need toxic fabric treatments. It isn’t easy to find untreated, natural fiber pajamas, but it is worth the effort.

Sucking

A baby gets more than nutrition from breastfeeding. They suck for comfort. There are plastic breast-substitutes available, but letting a baby suck is the natural, stuff-free way to go. ByNature.ca held off stocking pacifiers for almost 5 years, but customers asked time and time again for an all-natural, non-toxic option they could trust. So, they stocked the Natursutten pacifier in natural rubber, the safest pacifier on the market. NOTE: If you are planning to breastfeed, it is highly recommended that no pacifier or bottle be introduced until you have a strong nursing relationship established.

Diapers

Nighttime diapering is not mysterious. All it takes is enough absorbency and enough leak protection. Trying to use the same diapers for 8-12 hours that a baby wears during the day for 2-4 hours is asking for an accident, so don’t! It is easy to adjust absorbency of cloth diapers. You will need to adapt to your baby’s needs—how long does she sleep, when does she wet at night and how much. Start with 2-3 organic cotton prefolds and a nice, Canadian-made, 100% wool Aristocrats wool soaker and adjust from there.

That ammonia smell that can become very concentrated in a baby’s diaper by morning may cause chemical reactions in soft plastics. Polyester, polyurethane, and other polymers are broken down in the recycling (depolymerization) process with, among other chemical agents, ammonia. (Feedstock Recycling of Plastic Wastes, José Aguado and David P. Serrano, p55.) So, avoid plastics in diapers and diaper covers in order to avoid this particular science experiment.

Those are a few, simple first steps to take, but this is still a STUFF-oriented approach. After I finish by writing about toys tomorrow, I will follow with further steps at the end of June in our second week of focus on plastic.

• 

Two Big Issues with Plastic Use

The first issue, off-gassing.

New car smell. You know that characteristic smell and that of a new shower curtain or plastic doll. You may be smelling the sweet, mild smell of vinyl chloride, which is used to make PVC (polyvinyl chloride). Short-term exposures can cause dizziness and headaches, while long-term exposures can cause liver damage, cancer, and reproductive effects. The smell tends to go away over time.

The polymers (long chains of molecules) that make up soft plastics are more likely to have unreacted monomers (single, unchained molecules). Outgassing happens as unreacted chemical monomers are released. Once the unreacted monomers are released, the smell is more mild or even undetectable.

We get used to the smell and even crave it to trigger memory. What else could explain the desire to buy “New car smell spray”? Some people sniff glue, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Vinyl research is extensive, and research on other soft plastics is building. We’ve trained ourselves to crave what is harming us.

In the case of outgassing, there is no further chemical reaction necessary to release the toxins since they are not chained to the polymers. We might detect their release as smell, or they might leach into our water from plastic single-use water bottles or plastic linings of reusable water bottles.

The second issue, chemical reactions changing the plastic.

Unreacted chemicals in plastics can be released, but there can also be new reactions that change the plastics and allow the release of further toxins. Putting an acidic food like tomatoes in a plastic lined metal can will create a reaction. BPA (bisphenol A), a plastic chemical that “functions like a synthetic estrogen,” has been found in canned foods. This is the endocrine disruption that has been in the news for years. Unsafe levels of BPA are also found in 1 of 3 cans of infant formula.

Another issue, closely related to the second, radiation.

If you leave plastic water in the car in the sun, microwave food in plastic containers, or leave plastic toys in the yard, there could be a reaction between the ultraviolet light or the radiation and the plastic. Heating plastic can degrade the chemical bond. That chemical reaction could then leave toxins in the plastic that can be released.

In a microwave, the particular dangers come with fatty foods cooked at high temperatures. Even the most conservative advice urges us not to let plastics, like thin plastic wrap, touch foods in the microwave.

These are only a few of the possibilities. Frankly, like so many toxic situations in our world, it’s overwhelming. But, the point of today’s post is to consider eco baby steps.

Danger Areas

The U.S. CPSIA bans six phthalates in children’s products, three permanently and three pending further review. Those plastic chemicals banned are prohibited in children’s toys and child-care articles, which includes feeding, sleeping, and sucking.

Following this logic, I’ve divided products into three areas to discuss plastic-free alternatives: feeding, sleeping, and toys. Today, feeding. Sleeping and toys will follow in the next two days.

Easy Plastic-free Changes

The easiest changes we can make are to switch to plastic-free products that do much the same thing as the plastic products that have become so common over the past half century. There is little lifestyle change required to make a switch to plastic-free feeding products.

Glass

Some of the choices for babies and children are the same for the whole family. The changes we have made in the past couple of years are: have milk delivered in glass bottles, use glass containers for leftovers, and buy more products, especially ALL tomato products, in glass jars. Our county recycles all clear glass, and, though we don’t have curbside pick-up, we make a monthly visit to our recycling center to drop off everything we have collected.

The switch to glass is easy. Before there was plastic, there was glass. When plastic is banned, glass will still be with us.

ByNature.ca already carries glass baby bottles, and glass baby food jars are coming soon. Despite calling them “baby food jars,” these small glass containers (the big photo at the top of the post) are perfect for holding spices, cake decorating supplies, or small amounts of leftovers.

Stainless Steel

For serving, stainless steel is a great option because a child can drop it, and it won’t break like glass or ceramics can. ByNature.ca has a big variety of cups, dishes, and feeding accessories in stainless steel, including a cool divided tray in the shape of a bus. The one thing that really surprised me the first time I saw it was a stainless steel straw. Brilliant!

Another easy way to avoid plastic while dining out is to carry flatware with you. When I built my 72-hour bug-out bag of essentials, I saw a huge collection of different kinds of travel flatware. Some of them were camping utensils that hook all together, which can be a convenient way to keep from losing the occasional spoon in the bottom of your bag, but I choose a heavier set that came in its own snapping case. After I use and wipe down the utensils, I can just tuck them in their case and take them home to clean the utensils and the case. You don’t have to be so fancy. Just throw a few sets of flatware in a reusable cloth bag like the Planet Wise mini wet/dry bag, which is just the right size and can handle any mess you tuck into it.

Those are a few, simple first steps to take, but this is still a STUFF-oriented approach. After covering sleeping products and toys this week, I will follow with further steps at the end of June in our second week of focus on plastic.

• 

What better time to start our Focus on Plastic. Be sure to see today’s post on plastics hit you coming and going.

• 

We need to face the costs of plastics at both ends of the chain: in oil and gas exploration and in the toxic effects on our lives.

What Is Plastic Made Of?

Chart my husband learned from in school

The news is full of heartbreaking stories about the consequences of oil and gas exploration and production. Since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I see more headlines about “our addiction to oil.” We need to expand that. When we talk about breaking the addiction to oil, we have to talk about plastics. Oil should not be mistaken as just an issue of gasoline and transportation. Our dependence on plastics for everyday household products are a huge part of our need to push to find new sources of oil and gas without adequate safety nets.

When we see photos of tar balls on beaches and oil slicks covering hundreds of miles, we need to consider how we are working to lessen our dependence of petroleum products. When we see costs of seafood go up dramatically, we need to consider whether the alleged convenience of throwaway plastics has been worth those externalized costs.

I’ve just been shocked and almost overwhelmed to see the consequences of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. We all need to make the connection between petrochemical products, including plastics, and the devastation that we are seeing on the news.

What Is So Bad About Plastic?

Beyond the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, if we can even come close to beyond that, are health and environmental issues that follow from exposure to some plastics.

There are two approaches to the safety of plastics, the cautious approach that says it’s important to prove safety before use and the more common approach that it’s important to prove risk before removal from use. In general, safety advocates and environmentalists are taking the cautious approach and business and regulators are taking the risky approach. More and more, though, the cautious approach is becoming the mainstream approach.

In just the past two weeks, I have seen several major efforts by mainstream news to document toxic plastics. 60 Minutes ran a story on phthalates, the plastic softeners that make flexible plastic flexible (“Phthalates: Are They Safe?”); The New Yorker ran a story on BPA (bisphenol A) and other toxic plastics (“The Plastic Panic”); and yesterday I noticed that CNN is running a special on plastics (“Toxic America”). Once the story has hit these news outlets, people are aware and the approach tips far more toward the cautious approach. I’m even starting to hear more people in the mainstream calling for banning the more suspicious plastics from use.

Oil & gas and plastic industry lobbyists in these documentaries say that either the materials are safe because it hasn’t been proven otherwise or the regulations allow use of the materials so they’re just fine. They imply that there is no proof of risk or harm, but the scientific evidence showing risk and harm is building. The U.S. President’s Cancer Panel, for example, issued a report recommending strengthening U.S. federal chemical laws, increasing funding for research, and stepping up enforcement. The frank approach of the study is alarming, as it should be.

The Panel was particularly concerned to find that the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated. With nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States, many of which are used by millions of Americans in their daily lives and are un- or understudied and largely unregulated, exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread. One such ubiquitous chemical, bisphenol A (BPA), is still found in many consumer products and remains unregulated in the United States, despite the growing link between BPA and several diseases, including various cancers. “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now,” p5.

Parents should understand that the burden of environmental toxins, including plastics, is not shared equally. “[C]hildren are far more vulnerable to environmental toxins and radiation than adults” because of their smaller body mass and their rapid development. “To a disturbing extent,” the panel writes, “babies are born ‘pre-polluted.’” This pre-pollution is causing alarming changes, particularly in boys as soft plastics (phthalates) mimic some human hormones and have been shown to disrupt normal development, feminizing some males. (Of the recent stories, the 60 Minutes pieces goes into this in the most detail.)

Our use of plastics in so many products has been a giant experiment on the human race and on the earth. The data from that experiment are coming in, and the results are not good for us.

Plastic may be pervasive in our lives, but WE make the choices. In most cases (I’m excepting many medical situations—for now), we can use alternatives that don’t carry as many risks.

Special thanks to Taina of Plastic Manners. She is blogging her efforts to give up plastics for a year. She doesn’t have children, but she gets a lot of comments on her blog from parents. She encouraged us to cover the effort to eliminate plastics from babies’ and children’s lives.

Image © Bidouze Stéphane | Dreamstime.com

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For two weeks this month I am going to focus on plastics: why we need to become far more aware of plastics, how to make some of the small and easy changes, and then how we might approach some of the bigger but quite necessarily changes we need to make to rid ourselves of products that hurt us coming and going.

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