Just one word: PLASTICS

Just one word: Plastics! was the famous line from the Dustin Hoffman movie the Graduate. (Watch the clip!) The anonymous party goer told Dustin that PLASTIC was the future. Obviously, he was right, with a vengeance. Plastic is used everywhere, in every country in the world in millions of ways. It is indispensable for preserving perishables, transporting goods, making medical devices . . . the list goes on and on. But the life of each piece of plastic goes on and on too.

The problem of disposing of single use plastics has already taken on epic proportions. I try to recycle everything I can — and yet I am gobsmacked by the amount of plastic that still goes in my trash. Some plastic is too thin, some too thick, some too tangled in paper labels, some too compromised by food and bacteria to be recycled — in fact most plastic cannot be recycled.

“Every day, Americans throw away 500 million plastic straws, enough to circle the Earth twice, or fill 125 school buses. That means the average American uses over 35,000 of them in a lifetime.” CNN Jan 14, 2018

So I decided to stop using a piece of plastic most people don’t need at all anyway — the plastic straw. But it is harder than I thought when you eat at a restaurant. The servers always bring beverages with straws. You have to remember to ask, before even receiving a glass of tap water, to special order it without a straw, or else you automatically get at least one. I was starting to feel like a nut, special ordering water, until one of my daughters pointed me toward Tom Brady’s post.

Thank you Tom! I am finally part of a movement with some ‘street cred’! I will join you in taking the #BeatPlasticPollution challenge.

Now I just have to remember to ask for no straw BEFORE I am served one.