What is radical about refusing plastic?

The garbage we buy, the garbage we are directly or indirectly responsible for, the garbage that other people make while we say nothing . . . it has to go somewhere.  Where does it go?

The answer is that it goes back into the environment in one form or another.  We say we "throw it away", but there is no "away" on this finite earth we occupy.  If you're a typical person in the U.S., you're tossing 7 pounds of garbage into the can daily, according to a University of Columbia study; about a third of that is packaging, meaning stuff that you didn't ever want in the first place.   And domestic trash cans in turn make up a miniscule fraction (about 3%) of the garbage our country produces on our behalf.  The rest of the waste -- mostly mining, manufacture, and farming -- is garbage we produce indirectly because of what and how we consume.  That's a lot of stuff to hide from the sight of those of us who want to walk through neighborhoods that aren't piled high with litter, who want to drive along roads that have been cleared of illegal dumping, who want to visit beaches and forests and parks that aren't decorated with the accumulated remnants of decades of other people's department store castoffs and grocery wrappings.  

Where do we hide the litter, to keep it from our sight?  We put it in places where the people don't have the political capital to object.   We bury (or process, or burn) our trash in places where poor people and people of color live.   Here is a description from Energy.gov, the Office of Legacy Management,  "Environmental Justice History":

Another study that sprang from the Warren County protest is Toxic Waste and Race, a 1987 United Church of Christ study that examined the relationship between waste siting decisions in the United States and race. That study concluded that race was the most significant factor in siting hazardous waste facilities, and that three out of every five African Americans and Hispanics live in a community housing toxic waste sites.

 

Critics to both studies have presented arguments supporting different conclusions for waste siting decisions. Some argue that the cost of land and favorable business climates are greater predictors of waste siting decisions. Others have argued that minority and low-income residents have moved into neighborhoods hosting a waste facility due to the cheap cost of land. Regardless to the reason, a clear feeling in many minority communities is that they have been targeted for unwanted land uses and have little, if any, power to remedy their dilemma.

We think of our roles as consumers as being personal ones, occasionally political ones.  But our blindness and our indifference to where our trash goes has deep racial and humanitarian implications.  Those of us wealthy Americans -- who live a consumer/disposer lifestyle -- are poisoning our environment, but we're poisoning the environment of poor people of color even more than we're poisoning the environment of middle class, white people.  

We could respond by protesting the locations of landfills (and many brave people do just that).  But protesting is hard work, and it's hard to be everywhere at once.  Do you know where your trash goes?  Our own county Waste Management Authority has facilities in four different zip codes, and that doesn't account for the materials they sell or ship elsewhere.   Making protests even more fraught, we all know the garbage has to go somewhere.   So do we protest by arguing we ought to build landfills in rich white neighborhoods instead?

I say all this to remind us that, by comparison, saying "no thank you" to excess stuff in the first place is So. Much. Easier.  

Before you do it the first time, taking your own container to a restaurant and asking the server to place leftovers there seems Radical.   And then you do it, and it's not so bad.  Likewise for stopping excess mail.  And for patching the hole in a piece of clothing instead of tossing it and buying a brand new version.  And bringing your own bags to the store.  And switching from soda in plastic bottles to tea in paper packets or purchased bulk.  And learning to make your own granola.  And finding a store where you can bulk buy jelly beans and bring them home in your beautiful glass jars instead of plastic bags.  And putting a plate on top of a bowl instead of cling wrap.  And using cut-up t-shirts instead of paper towels (that would have come wrapped in plastic).  

These are all simple acts.  And yet, they all speak to the Radical notion that, by caring for the physical world immediately around us, we're affecting the physical world for people far away from us, too.   And this is so, so important.  Because on this finite planet we live on, there is no 'away'.