Plastic is Passé
by M'Lynn Hartwell
| Plastic can take a thousand years to disintegrate ... If the American Revolutionary Minutemen had used plastic bags to carry around their musket balls, sandwiches, beef jerky, and candles; we'd still see their bags blowing across our fields, in our lakes, stuck in rural fences, hanging from tree branches, and clogging urban drains. |
Paper or plastic? It's a question we hear every time we go to the grocery store. It's time shoppers in NW Michigan had a better choice – recyclable and reusable containers.
Dear consumers and shoppers. I wouldn't bring this matter up if it wasn't incredibly important. May I have a moment to share a few ideas on plastic single use shopping/grocery bags? In all honesty, I probably wouldn't be asking for your time if all of your plastic was being properly recycled...
...But it's not. Plastic bags are in trees and on fences, in the creek near my house, flapping on windy days from my shrubs, and rolling across the lawn like tumbleweed on the way to their next unsightly outpost.
Not far from my house there's a farmstead where the Olson family keeps a small bison herd. I love them. I love the shaggy adults and the hairy reddish calves. I love their dignified indifference. It's a joy to see them on my commute into town. Yet that simple joy is spoiled by the dirty shards of torn plastic bag, advertising one big-box store after another, tangled in the wire that fences off their home.
Michigan. America! Plastic is everywhere. Plastic bags are clogging our waterways, choking wildlife to death, killing Great Lakes fish, and generally turning the planet into an endless landfill.
Plastic consumes fuel. About 380 billion plastic bags are used in the United States each year. It takes approximately 12 million barrels of precious expensive oil each year to make these bags, and up to 1,000 years for them to disintegrate.
Single use plastic water bottle labels may conjure up images of pristine mountain streams, but the truth behind the image is that bottled water bottles are terrible for the environment. Last year, the manufacture of plastic water bottles generated several million tons of carbon dioxide emissions and required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil.
Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. EVERY HOUR! Billions of pounds of plastic bottles end up in landfills or as roadside and lake bottom litter. Given that only three states (not Michigan) have container deposit laws that address plastic water bottles, the recycling rates for these bottles pale in comparison to soft drink and beer bottles.
As if this weren't bad enough plastic bags and bottles can take a thousand years to disintegrate, posing a threat to marine life, birds, and other animals. To put this in perspective, these bags and bottles may still be an environmental problem in your family fifty generations from now. If the American Revolutionary Minutemen had used plastic bags to carry around their musket balls, sandwiches, beef jerky, and candles; we'd still see their bags blowing across our fields, in our lakes, stuck in rural fences, hanging from tree branches, and clogging urban drains. This is a terrible legacy to leave for our children, and our children's children's ... children.
You have a choice
The next time you shop, please consider placing your purchases in a durable reusable bag. While you are at the store, pick up an environmentally safe refillable water bottle, and enjoy N.W. Michigan's fresh and pure tap water.
Consumers often don't realize that public drinking water is more heavily regulated than bottled water (e.g. at least as safe and refreshing). It's true. Look it up! (source)
Recycle
There definitely is a sustainable market for used grocery bags. The uses are almost unlimited.
Recycling of these bags is one of the easiest techniques used in the industry. As long as the bags are collected and baled into a form that can be transported they can be reused many times over to continue to make all sorts of products from plastic lumber to containers.
The biggest problem with our society in overcoming the disposal mentality is commitment. If we are committed to re-using our resources instead of disposing of them, we will leave our children a much better place to live.
We have never had a landfill crisis. What we have in Michigan is a resource-management crisis. There are resource wars going around the planet right now trying to gain access the raw materials that are being dumped in our landfills and destroyed by incinerators.
Tap Water is Clearly Better
After years of serving bottled water, restaurants around the country are now thinking outside the bottle and serving only tap water. From New York to California, prominent restaurants like Del Poso and Chez Panisse are removing bottled water from their menus. So is the largest food cooperative in the United States, the Park Slope Food Co-op in New York City. Gourmet purveyors are dispensing with Perrier and Evian in favor of something, well, a bit more common.
Three decades ago the bottled water boom began when it appeared on the menus of high-end restaurants. Just like consumers, many restaurateurs had been led to believe that what’s in the bottle is somehow safer and more reliable than what is on tap. However, the restaurant industry is turning back the clock on the bottled water industry by refusing to act as a vehicle for promoting such a wasteful “product.” And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Chefs and business owners are learning that as much as 40 percent of bottled water actually comes from the same source as municipal tap water. What’s more, tap water is much more highly regulated than bottled water. And in the same way restaurants are concerned about the source of the foods they serve, the decision to stop serving hauled water often derives from a concern about what is happening upstream, so to speak.
In addition to crowding landfills and contributing to global warming, the bottled water industry is threatening local control of public water. To put five dollar bottles of water on tables, communities from India to Mexico, Texas to Michigan and Maine to California are losing control of what was once considered a basic human right — fresh, safe, tasty, local tap water. That’s a further reason why restaurants who take pride in modeling best practices in the food service industry, are taking a pass on bottled water.
Serving tap water is a convenient way for restaurateurs to maintain their commitment to quality. Pledging to “Think Outside the Bottle” reduces waste, saves patrons money, and protects the primary resource that allows the restaurant business to thrive. Tap water goes great with any cuisine.
NMEAC encourages Michigan cities to join communities and nations around the world in banning, or at least replacing, plastic bags and single-serving plastic bottles; with reusable environmentally friendly containers. Please enjoy the pure delicious tap water in N.W. Michigan.
