Think Globally Act Locally | The Power Of R

 
 
In many of my presentations I speak about the Great Pacific Garbage patch. Massive amounts of plastic find their way into our water ways on land, make their way to the seashore and eventually start spinning around in the ocean.  Plastic lasts forever because it is a synthetic material (man-made) that doesn't naturally occur in our environment. There is a big push from people who are aware of this problem to eliminate plastic from our lifestyles. This will take time but something you we can do today is eliminate our use of one-time use packaging and we can be a huge part of the solution to stop the flow of plastic into the ocean.

If you have to make a choice to purchase food in a glass container or in plastic packaging, always choose glass. Glass is made from melted sand and it is completely inert, which means there are no chemicals in glass that will hurt your body. Glass does not hurt the environment either. When glass breaks, it eventually turns back into sand. Sand is a natural part of our environment so there is no pollution.

To lower my ecological footprint I have been using recycled yogurt and margarine containers to carry my lunches in - things like sandwiches and carrot sticks, but I am making a permanent switch to glass. Pyrex glass containers are becoming more readily available and they are perfect for lunches and left overs. Thick, durable pyrex glass containers are heavier than plastic but you can feel good about knowing you are not eating any inorganic chemicals like Bisphenol A that may leach out of the plastic.

Plastic is made from oil that comes from the ground. Oil fuels our cars, and it can be used to create electricity but oil is a non-renewable resource that is clogging our atmosphere with greenhouse gasses. If we start using glass and porcelain instead of plastic again like humans have done through history for thousands of years, we can collectively slow the gasses in the atmosphere and stop plastic from ever getting into the ocean. That is a world that I would like to live in - plastic free and healthy for me, you, our families, friends and environment.
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So I've given these re-useable produce bags a try the last few times I've been grocery shopping. They definitely work well and turn a lot of  heads in the broccoli isle. I'm actually very impressed with these little bags called TazzyTotes. I use them for a majority of my shopping in the produce section and I even put a couple  Chorizo sausages in one to see how well it worked for deli stuff. The woman behind the deli counter was confused, "can we use this... is this legal... is it food safe?" "That's an interesting question," I replied. "I promise I won't sue you for living on the edge."

It's really amazing to look around the grocery store and see all of the packaging, I mean, actually see it for what it is. It's insanity. When I got home with my reusable bags and put them in the fridge, I went out to the garage and perused my overloaded recycling bins. About 95% of the stuff in my bins is food packaging. I'm not sure what to say about that except I think something is wrong with this picture.

Food security is a huge issue in our country and you only have to contract dysentery once to figure out why. Clean food is not something we really have to think about every day, save the listeria outbreak last year in Maple Leaf meat products.  The thing that bothers me the most though is our obsession with wrapping foods, even vegetables, into a state of total plasticity. Fancy plastic packaging is taking over what used to be a very natural and  "organic" daily routine.

When the woman at the deli counter contemplated the possibility of being fired for giving me two pieces of dried meat in my own bag, I had to give my head a shake. Our society is so safe that we can walk around like a bunch of lemmings and never really worry about falling over a ledge. It is possible to go through the day to day in Canada without actually being present until American Idol comes on and you need to wake up and become an expert singing judge for an hour. The Canadian legal system has done a very efficient job of separating our own consciousness from reality. Especially when it comes to grocery shopping.

For me, the grocery store is like a zombie land most of the time. I walk around there, buy stuff, and I don't really know where I've been until I arrive home. It's at that point I snap out of my consumer hypnosis and remember the organic green onions in the thick plastic bags saying ,"buy me I'm organic and pretty," the cauliflower saying "I can double as a bowling ball and I promise that I'm tasty," the California strawberries saying "we're flavorless and watery so that's why we need a plastic fish tank to keep us together in shipping... buy us anyways"  Really, where's the choice when the produce talks to you. Our brains are being buried in synthetic marketing.

We just need to wake up and make the experience of shopping a discerning process again. At the very least, talk back when we're being told what to do by a pile of plastic wrapped cucumbers. Maybe if we peel all of the plastic off the vegetables before we buy them, the stores will put pressure on the suppliers to stop sending veggies wrapped in petroleum products.  The grocery store would amass so much garbage that things would have to change. Give a reusable bag a try next time you go shopping, they don't talk back I promise.
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