{"id":29203,"date":"2023-03-31t15:26:31","date_gmt":"2023-03-31t15:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.getitdoneaz.com\/?p=29203"},"modified":"2023-03-31t15:35:10","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31t15:35:10","slug":"solving-plastic-problem-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.getitdoneaz.com\/story\/solving-plastic-problem-past\/","title":{"rendered":"essay | is the key to solving the plastic problem in our past?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

less than 100 years ago, plastic was not a dominant material in human society, yet today its pollution is one of our most expansive, wicked<\/a> environmental problems. plastic dominates every part of society, from the grocery store to furniture, packaging, cars, children\u2019s toys, and more. its production continues to grow, as the american chemistry council<\/a> cites that 8.1 billion pounds of plastic resin was produced in the united states just in january of 2023. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

the resulting waste after plastic is used is a problem that is overwhelming and difficult to solve. in particular, non-point-source pollution of plastic into oceans<\/a> that breaks down into microplastics that then enter the food chain, is a terrifying new reality for our planet. so, it is hard to believe that for some elderly people today, like my grandmother jane, born in 1930, the distant memories of a world without plastic do remain. i turn to jane in my search for answers to the plastic problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

when i spoke with jane about the issue of plastic, our conversation began with a deep dive into how her family acquired groceries when she was a child. jane grew up in connecticut, and she told me, \u201ci was 10\u2026 [when] they opened the first supermarket. before that, my mother ordered her groceries over the phone.\u201d jane described a system where different products came from separate stores as opposed to one large hub of the supermarket. \u201cthe milk was delivered and left on your back porch every morning. we always thought it was a great thing, if it was cold enough, the milk froze. the milk was separated, it wasn\u2019t homogenized the way it is now. so, we had cream floating on top\u2026 then we\u2019d spoon off some of this rich icy cream. it was a treat.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n

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(state library victoria collections<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

beyond the perk of this icy cream at a time before freezers and an endless supply of ice cream you could take home, was the lack of plastic waste in this milk delivery system. jane explained, \u201c[the milk] came in a glass bottle\u2026 the milk truck used to go by every single morning, early in the morning, and the milkman used to jump out with your three or four bottles or whatever you ordered, quart-sized bottles.\u201d <\/em>i responded asking her what happened to the bottles once her family drank all the milk. \u201cwell, you\u2019d wash them and then when the milkman delivered your new milk bottles filled with milk, he took the old ones away, and he sterilized them at the dairy, and you\u2019d reuse them. of course some of them got broken, but they were pretty tough glass, pretty thick and hard to break.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

i realize that what jane detailed is a closed-loop system, where packaging does not have a single-use lifespan, but instead is reused over and over. while this precise system of a milkman might not be replicable everywhere in the united states, several organizations are endeavoring to popularize the practice<\/a> once again, and the same concept could be applied with a system where people return glass bottles to the store themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

after jane described these systems that were separate from the new concept of the supermarket, i asked her to describe what the packaging was like in grocery stores during her childhood. she said simply, \u201cthere wasn\u2019t [packaging]. everything was in bins. and you would go in and there would be a paper bag, and you would put what you wanted in a paper bag, and usually there was a scale so you could weigh it if you wanted to. but the customer did it themselves and took what they wanted. and you could pick it over; you didn\u2019t get spoiled fruit or anything.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

essentially, all grocery stores were set up the way that some farmer\u2019s markets still are today. while today we also still do have sections of the grocery store with fruit and vegetables to pick on your own, they are placed in plastic bags, and berries, for example, always come in a plastic container. jane told me that for those small fruits, they came in wooden boxes. she concluded, \u201cin other words, everything was degradable.\u201d <\/em>the city she lived in connecticut as a child even had a system where trash was divided between the edible and the inedible. \u201call the edible food had to be put in separately so it could be fed to the pigs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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a grocery store in 1947 with notably absent plastic packaging. (don o’brien<\/a>\/flickr)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

part of what\u2019s so fascinating about jane\u2019s accounts of the past are that she did not live in an \u201cenvironmentalist\u201d world. our concepts of individual environmental accountability today, like bringing a reusable bag to the store, were not something people thought to do during her childhood and young adulthood in the 1940s and 1950s. additionally, she told me that in her honest memory and experience, that while she became sensitive to concepts of environmental pollution after rachel carson\u2019s a silent spring <\/em>was published, she didn\u2019t really become aware of global warming until much later, in the late 1990s when al gore was running for president. she recalled that in her social circles, \u201cnobody took al gore seriously, which is something i passionately regret. they really, really did not.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

so, how is it that today, where yale climate opinion maps from 2021<\/a> cite that 72% of americans believe in climate change, that related environmental problems, such as plastic waste, are so much worse than they were during jane\u2019s childhood? <\/em>how is it that we have gone from a significantly less wasteful society with no environmental concern, to a surplus of waste society where more than the majority of people are concerned about environmental problems like climate change?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the answer is that the system has fundamentally changed, from one where waste\u2019s biodegradability was inevitable to one where long-lasting waste is impossible to avoid<\/a>. of course, the plastic industry itself drove this change, despite its initial slow start<\/a>. jane recalled that \u201cthe sort of bendable plastic, like what we would call plastic wrap was the first thing. that started sometime after the war. it just came into gradual use. it was nothing that was very sudden. some places used it, and some places didn\u2019t, and as time went by, more and more places used it, and at some point it became pretty standard that all your produce would be wrapped.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

thus, our solutions to the plastic problem must be aimed at changing systems. since plastic went from being unheard of to quickly taking over, our alternatives could do the same. we need to find new material industries<\/a> that are biodegradable to take over the places where we rely on plastic, such as for preservation. at the same time, we need to re-introduce systems of the past of both reusability and minimal packaging where possible. simply put, in jane\u2019s words: \u201cwe lived without all the plastic.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

how can we address the issue of plastic waste? my grandmother remembers a time before the widespread use of plastics in food packaging that might just hold the answer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10774,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4900,4937],"tags":[4403,425],"storyfest_categories":[],"class_list":["post-29203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-green-living","category-plastic","tag-plastic-alternatives","tag-plastic-waste"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nessay | is the key to solving the plastic problem in our past? - planet forward<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"my grandmother remembers a time before the widespread use of plastics in food packaging that might just hold the answer to the waste crisis.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"\/\/www.getitdoneaz.com\/story\/solving-plastic-problem-past\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_us\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"essay | is the key to solving the plastic problem in our past? 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