Accidental activism

Recently I've been trying to cut down further on my use of plastics, because I'm hearing more and more about how wasteful and pollutive they are. They're especially bad for a lot of sea animals. I've always carried a reusable bottle or mug for beverages and used canvas bags at the market. (My mom has been reusing paper bags at the market since I was in high school!) But with buying all the produce for the bunnies, I was ending up using a lot of those flimsy produce bags. I was drying and re-using these, but I knew there was a better way.

I started using these canvas produce bags. I wish I had been handy enough to sew them myself, but lacking both the time and the skill, I opted to get them from reusable bags.com.

So nearly every time I go shopping with these bags, someone will stop me to ask about them. Not only are people interested to learn that there's an easy way that they can avoid excess plastic but I also get a chance to connect with other individuals who are concerned about some of the same things I am. These are just random meetings, comments in passing really, but in the face of everything, having a pleasant dialog with someone about the human impact on the environment is a small source of hope. You feel like you've made a difference or encouraged each other to keep fighting the good fight and pondering what more we can do.

I am seeing more and more canvas bags these days, and I love it. Sure, it's not going to solve global warming or end pollution, but it is something that citizens can do. Some of the power still rests in our hands. When we succeed at taking these smaller steps, sometimes larger changes begin to seem more within our reach.

A few factoids to get you motivated to curb your own use of wasteful and damaging plastics:

** Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.

** Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest.

** As part of Clean Up Australia Day, in one day nearly 500,000 plastic bags were collected.

** Windblown plastic bags are so prevalent in Africa that a cottage industry has sprung up harvesting bags and using them to weave hats, and even bags. According to the BBC, one group harvests 30,000 per month.

** According to David Barnes, a marine scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, plastic bags have gone "from being rare in the late 80s and early 90s to being almost everywhere from Spitsbergen 78° North [latitude] to Falklands 51° South [latitude]."

** Plastic bags are among the 12 items of debris most often found in coastal cleanups, according to the nonprofit Center for Marine Conservation.