Annual global production of plastic? Over 800 billion pounds
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch? 600 thousand sq. miles between CA and Hawaii, roughly 1.8 trillion plastic shards
Greatest polluters? North Americans produce 500 lbs. of plastic waste a year, twice as much as the average European, 16 times as much as the average Indian
National Sword? the 2017 policy whereby China refused imports of “foreign garbage,” leaving the west with plastic they couldn’t get rid of
Largest producers of plastic? The fossil fuel industry. “Exxon Mobil, the world’s fourth largest oil company is also the largest producer of virgin polymers.”
“A Trillion Little Pieces,” by Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker, 7/3/23, 24-27.
If the reader feels like I do–drowning in plastic crap that leaches nasty chemicals into our food and ocean–take heart. One woman stands stalwart against the tide. Leticia Padilla, bilingual mother of three young adults and barely five feet tall, could be the patron saint of sustainability. If we all did even half of what she does, there might be hope for humans!
She was initially inspired by Laudato Si’ when she read it in 2015, so it seems appropriate, as we anticipate Pope Francis’ new document on the environment October 4, to see how one family could adjust its lifestyle to reduce their use of single-use plastics. I ask Leticia for the “dummy’s guide,” 5 things any moron could do to reduce plastic pollution. She suggests the Five R’s:
Refuse. The E.P.A recommends we avoid single-use plastic altogether, since the chances of a bottle or bag winding up in landfill or the ocean are high. Before buying anything, Leticia and her family ask questions that might have come from the early Christian abbesses and monks, “Do I really need this? And what do I do with it when I get it home?” She thinks we must speak directly to the producers of items we are purchasing and demand they change. (Why, for instance, must Costco wrap my small jar of face cream in an impenetrable layer of plastic and a huge chunk of cardboard?)
For essentials like groceries, she provides her own containers, buys bulk foods, and saves a fortune. Much of what we pay for is a container we don’t need; the spices in a $5 jar might be worth only 60 cents. She consistently gets off the mailing lists for catalogues and junk mail; even though paper is recyclable, that still takes an industrial process.
Reduce. Leticia once went a year and a half without buying any personal items (clothes, make-up, accessories, household items). Her husband runs the only green pallet company in California, recycling wood with an electric grinder, making wood chips for ground cover. Unfortunately, there is no meaningful way to recycle plastic; the only way to reduce it is to cut off the sources. Predictably, oil/plastic producing companies lobby intensely against alternatives. But in a bright banner of hope, Leticia is a “gleaner.” At first that sounds like a Biblical term (wasn’t that how Ruth met Boaz?). In California it means ringing doorbells and asking owners for the fruit rotting on their trees: oranges, pears and plums that can go to the food bank. She belongs to the Forestr organization https://www.forestr.org/ that has gleaned over 73,534 lbs. of food. One owner of a huge, 27-year old citrus tree expressed her thanks to the gleaning team, doing a job that would be impossible for an individual. Forestr also starts urban farms, collects litter and develops pocket parks.
Three more “R’s” to be continued next week…
Kathy Coffey 