As evidence of our plastic pollution problem has grown, a movement to end what has turned out to be a toxic relationship with plastic has begun spreading around the globe. More of us are taking a hard look at the plastic in our lives, and speaking up about why we need to decrease the immense amount of plastic being used and tossed worldwide.
“This is about more than just giving up plastic on an individual basis. It’s also about becoming a campaigner in your community, in your workplace.” –Will McCallum, Head of Greenpeace Oceans campaigns
To help support this shift, Will McCallum, Head of Oceans for Greenpeace UK, wrote How to Give Up Plastic: A Guide to Changing the World, One Plastic Bottle at a Time. Responding to repeated inquiries from friends, colleagues, and the public about how they could help address the problem of plastic pollution, Mcallum wrote the book to put all the information in one place.
“It’s also a chance to help people realize that they are campaigners in their own right, and this is about more than just about giving up plastic on an individual basis. It’s also about becoming a campaigner in your community, in your workplace,” McCallum says.
Providing Practical Tools for Plastic Activism
In addition to walking readers through the process of cutting down on personal use, the book provides practical tools to help readers push companies and communities to find alternatives to plastics. McCallum emphasizes that though our individual use of plastic is part of the problem, it’s far from the root of it. That lies in our throwaway culture and the companies promoting it.
Getting rid of the idea that you use something once for a few minutes or even a few seconds is critical, says McCallum. “We have to reduce, and we have to start building in reuse and longevity into our product design.” Pressing elected leaders and the companies we buy from to curb plastic use is a crucial step in this process.
Understanding the Scope of the Plastic Problem
We’re coming to realize that the plastics we use for mere seconds may linger in the environment for centuries. And they’re not only harming marine creatures, they’re getting everywhere, in the water we drink and the air we breathe. The problem of plastics is not distant, it’s all around us, all the time.
This realization, says McCallum, has spurred a global movement. “I’ve been an environmental campaigner for more than ten years,” he explains, “and in that time I’ve never worked on an issue that has inspired so many people to start thinking about the environment as plastics has.”
In part, he thinks, the visibility of plastic pollution and the tangible ways we can link the plastic problem to our own daily choices has helped propel the movement. Unlike the seemingly invisible systems affecting our climate, the plastic problem is “one we have a huge amount of power to make better,” McCallum says.
Because microscopic bits of plastic are now found everywhere, even in the remotest parts of the world, reclaiming the plastics we’ve released isn’t really feasible.“We’re past the point where we can just take plastic out of environment,” McCallum admits.
But we can stop problem from getting worse. With plastic production predicted to quadruple by 2050, McCallum remains hopeful that the immense energy around reducing plastic can help reverse the trend. He believes reexamining our plastic use “is an amazing opportunity for innovation around thinking about things in a more circular way.”
Here are some of McCallum’s tips for becoming a plastic activist.
1. Start with yourself
Understanding your own plastic use is a smart place to start, helping you see where everyday plastics might most easily get phased out. McCallum recommends beginning with the “low-hanging fruit” in your life.
The most likely candidates are what he calls the ‘Big 4,’ things we encounter daily that are also some of the most-found items on beaches and in oceans: plastic bags, plastic water bottles, plastic beverage containers, and straws, which are all easily replaced with reusables.
If you’re a smoker, McCallum adds, giving up the habit will help reduce the number of cigarette butts, which consistently top lists of beach trash.
Related:
- How to Reduce Plastic Pollution in 15 Easy Swaps
- Best Eco-Friendly Alternatives for the Plastic in Your Life
These kinds of changes require shifts in habits, which some people struggle with. For that reason, the book’s first chapter on plastic reduction focuses on the bathroom, which he notes “is great for discovering… in that good part of the internet… so many companies and so many individuals trying to go plastic-free and waste-free.”
For a lot of people, McCallum says, swapping out products rather than entirely changing their habits is an easier first step. Numerous products come in refillable tins or completely unpackaged that can replace most of your personal care products, everything from shampoo bars and deodorant to toothpaste and lip balm.
Just be aware that everything we use has a footprint, even if it’s not made from plastic. As McCallum explains, exchanging one single-use product for another will just “create an environmental problem somewhere else. …You’re just going to change nature of the problem — you’re not going to solve it.”
2. Talk about the problem
Possibly more important than cutting your own plastic use, McCallum emphasizes, “is talking publicly to your friends and colleagues about why you’re doing it and what they can do to be part of the solution.”
As you shift your habits, share your efforts. Your colleagues will take note that your reusable coffee cup and your zero-waste lunch reduce waste and save you money, and they may follow suit. Family members may be inspired by your efforts to eliminate single-use plastic in your home. As they adopt these new habits, they’ll model them for their friends and colleagues, who will do likewise, spreading the message of a less plastic-intensive lifestyle.
3. Take (and share) the plastic pledge
Consider taking McCallum’s plastic pledge and sharing it at your school or workplace:
Starting today, I pledge to do my best to give up plastic. It’s not an easy journey, or a short one, and in many cases it may not be completely possible, but here’s me trying to do my best by pledging:
- To refuse plastic wherever I can, such as not using plastic straws, bags, coffee cups or bottles.
- To reduce my plastic footprint whenever possible by choosing non-plastic materials built to last.
- To reuse plastic items like containers where I can’t refuse or reduce them.
- To recycle or repurpose everything else that I can.
- To tell everyone I know about what I’m doing to get rid of plastic and encourage them to join me!
“Amplifying your actions by talking about them with your friends, colleagues and on social media,” McCallum writes, “you can have so much more impact than only working behind closed doors.”
Tell companies to break free from plastic
In addition to revamping your own habits, McCallum recommends urging companies to make over their own. Write or call the companies who make your food and household supplies and ask that they switch to non-plastic packaging. They need to hear from consumers that there’s a demand for less plastic waste.
Keep your message simple and positive, even when you’re calling out a company for wasteful practices. Often, McCallum says, smaller companies don’t realize the habits they’ve adopted are harmful, and they make changes when they realize their mistake. He notes that a number of recent “Twitter storms” have caused British supermarkets to reevaluate what they stock on their shelves.
Memorably, when Whole Foods tried to sell pre-peeled oranges in plastic containers in 2016, one person’s tweet nipped that huge eco-mistake in the bud. “If only nature would find a way to cover these oranges so we didn’t need to waste so much plastic on them,” Nathalie Gordon quipped in a Twitter post. Within hours, Whole Foods apologized and pulled the product.
5. Ask for plastic alternatives in-person
In-person requests can have an impact as well. Speak to managers at the eateries you frequent about not giving out plastic straws and tableware, or at least asking before they do. How many times have you been handed plastic stuff with your lunch that you don’t even use once before it gets tossed in the trash?
Point out that they’ll also save money on these unnecessary supplies. Your children’s school is another good target for anti-plastic conversations.
Talk to your local grocery store about charging for plastic shopping and produce bags to encourage other shoppers to bring their own.
6. Push for anti-plastics regulation
Some companies have already begun the process of cutting back on plastic use, but the plastics industry is enormous, and as McCallum observes in the final pages of the book, “Plastic is not simply going to disappear overnight, and it’s certainly not going to go away without a fight.”
More stringent regulations are needed to reduce worldwide plastic use. Call on your elected officials to create legislation that incentivizes reducing plastic. Your city government can impose a single-use plastic fee, and federal government could create laws to curb industrial plastic production.
McCallum tries to make it easy for novice activists to petition elected officials. He offers straightforward advice for conducting an anti-plastic campaign in your community and gives a template for letters to leaders. Eartheasy used his advice to create this sample letter.
Get inspired and get to work
Though I’ve been actively cutting my family’s plastic use for years, my discussions with people on the frontlines of the plastics problem have moved me to speak out more. I discovered and joined a plastic-free support group on Facebook for encouragement and solutions. The wisdom of over twenty thousand members has helped me address some thornier plastic problems. Finding kindred spirits has also inspired me to speak out more.
I’ve been silently unhappy that all the cheese my co-op sells comes wrapped in plastic for sometime now. But it was only recently when I was there shopping the bulk bins with my glass jars that it occurred to me to ask the deli manager whether I could purchase cheese before they packed it up in plastic.
He was a little by surprised the request (the first time he’d heard of such a thing), but he obligingly took my container to the back room and popped some cheese in for me. I was so elated I took a picture and immediately published it to my social media accounts.
Related:
Talking with McCallum and other plastics activists also moved me to write to the makers of my kids’ toothpaste, the dairy our milk comes from, and my local co-op. I’ve asked to speak with the manager about helping cut the use of plastics in the bulk section with incentives.
Imagine the impact if companies hear from thousands of us every week? Perhaps one day soon, living with a lot less plastic will become a whole lot easier.
As McCallum notes at the close of his book, “We need a movement made up of billions of individual acts, bringing people together from all backgrounds and all cultures, the ripples of which will be felt from the smallest village to the tallest skyscrapers.”
What will your first act be?
