Imagine this: You are having a summer BBQ with your neighbors and as you glance at the suggested menu items you try to find something that doesn’t require purchasing food in plastic. Your options are making homemade potato salad, macaroni salad, or making a dessert from scratch.
Which is possible, but very inconvenient.
But why? Why is the only choice for the average consumer convenient plastic?
Simply put, convenience.
Plastic can be more cost effective for companies, lightweight for transportation, and easy to justify a one-time use if it is not durable beyond the single intention for which it was made.
We have accepted our lives built on convenience without counting the cost.
The plastic issues are vast, intersected, and very complicated.
I will dive into more of the good, bad, and ugly of plastic next time; but for right now, I have a simple challenge for you.
Take notice of the plastic in your life.
The next time you go grocery shopping, put your groceries into piles on your counter.
Pile 1 - plastic packaging.
Pile 2 - cardboard or paper packaging.
Pile 3 - no packaging but has stickers or tags that contain plastic.
Pile 4 - Zero packaging.
Ask questions.
Are there better options at your grocery store to avoid the products with plastic (sometimes excessive) packaging?
Are there other meal options you could choose to make that use ingredients that use no or minimal packaging?
Is your produce in season?
Going even further.
What do you know about the food you bought? Was it ethically grown or made? Is there transparency from your local grocery stores or farmer’s markets?
Taking notice and asking questions is the best place to start.
The end goal? Accessibility to sustainable and ethical food sources for everyone. Path to get there? 1. Awareness. 2. Research and preparation. 3. Community and political action.
Accessibility to sustainable and ethical food sources is only one part of the environmental movement but it is intersected with other aspects such as medical care, housing, air pollution, circular economy, flora and fauna.
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