Alternatives to Plastic: Home Gardens. Photo: key lime_pie (flickr)

I recently came upon a blog by a Chicago woman committed to living as close to a plastic-free life as possible. Her journey to a life without plastic began last September, and over the months her postings about her adventures and increasing knowledge have gathered an audience in the thousands.

The statistics about our reliance on plastics are shocking: According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the amount of plastic in our waste stream has increased from less than 1 percent in 1960 to 11.7 percent in 2006. And, while Americans drank 50 billion bottles of water in 2006, 38 billion of those ended up in the trash, according to Fast Company magazine.

The anonymous blogger, whose blog is titled Life Less Plastic, explains that she's doing this for personal health reasons, as well to do better by the environment. Among her most popular posts is an entry describing "What I'm Doing to Be Mostly Plastic-Free," which includes:

10. Washing my dishes with Dr. Bronner's bar soap. It works! I'm not kidding!
11. Bringing my own stainless steel coffee mug to the coffee shop. This is important because paper cups are lined with plastic.
12. Bringing along a reusable water bottle or mug for water, and NEVER drinking bottled water.
13. Bringing my own takeout containers to restaurants in case I have leftovers. This sounds embarrassing, but no one has ever even noticed that I've brought my own container except for the people I'm with.
14. Not buying aluminum food cans, excluding canned tomatoes and vegetable broth, which I haven't been able to give up yet. Hopefully, I can/jar some tomatoes this summer and do away with this plastic use, though.

In a society where plastic is pervasive and packaging alternatives are few, even Life Less Plastic's author hasn't been able to do without medicine, which comes in plastic bottles; toothpaste; and even some packaged foods she hasn't been able to find in the bulk section of nearby supermarkets.

Plastics have been around for a while, but we are only beginning to understand their potentially negative consequences. Without plastic, we wouldn't have seen the advances in science and medicine we saw in the last century. However, as the Chicago blogger points out, there are a lot of ways to "live a life less plastic."

Photo: greenhem (flickr)

Plastic bags have long been associated with litter and waste. The world uses tens of billions of plastic bags every year – bags that end up hanging from trees, traveling along freeways, escaping garbage cans and waste dumps.

Plastic-bag recycling rates are extremely low – about 1 to 3 percent worldwide, according to Reusablebags.com.

While plastics have helped us in many ways – medical advances, for one – by now we are seeing an increasing amount of wasteful uses. The mass production and ubiquitousness of plastic bags has hit a nerve in many developing countries. Lawmaking bodies in every region of the world have begun to regulate the use of plastics — and some are even banning the use of plastic bags outright.

Here's a partial list:

India. In August 2005, the state of Maharashtra initiated a bag ban after bags "blocked sewage and drainage systems during record monsoon rains," according to The Guardian. "Flooding and landslides killed more than 1,000 people in the state.” Anyone seen with a plastic bag can be fined 1,000 rupees, or about $25.

Kenya. The East African nation has enforced new regulations banning production and distribution of light-density bags, according to Nairobi's Business Daily (as reported by allAfrica.com). Three years ago, Kenyan researchers had appealed for a ban, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai had argued that plastic bags can lead to malaria, because discarded bags left outside can fill with rainwater and breed disease-carrying mosquitoes.

Uganda and Tanzania. Kenya's neighbors also banned the use of all disposable one-use plastic bags nationwide. One Ugandan blogger wrote that “This seemingly radical step has a direct connection to human health and also to environmental well-being of citizens across Africa. Apart from the fossil fuel usage needed in their production, plastic bags have a remarkable ability to pollute across borders.”

China. Authorities announced that by this June, one-use plastic bags will be outlawed in the hope that residents will return to their old habit of using cloth bags and baskets. "Beijing residents appeared to take the ban in stride, reflecting rising environmental consciousness and concern over skyrocketing oil prices," reports National Geographic.

Some developed nations also have taken drastic steps to reduce the impact of plastics. Ireland, for example, imposed a 33-cent tax in 2002. It worked quickly to depress demand. According to the New York Times, the use of plastic bags dropped 94 percent within weeks.

Photo: Steve Bailey (flickr)

My attention has recently been drawn to the increasing opposition students, consumers and activists are having to bottled water. A US-based group called Think Outside the Bottle is beginning an advocacy campaign to bring awareness to some of the more dire consequences of our thirst for bottled water, and even government agencies are beginning to act to reduce their consumption.

“City and state governments are looking at the economics of banning bottled water. Citing environmental concerns and a misallocation of resources, Los Angeles; San Francisco; Ann Arbor, Mich.; and the state of Illinois have banned the use of public funds to purchase bottled water for city and state functions…In June, the US Conference of Mayors adopted a resolution to bring attention to the negative impact of bottled water and promote local sources."

The director of a consumer rights group called Food and Water Watch has noticed that people of all types are showing increased awareness about issues involved with bottled water, according to the Christian Science Monitor. "I overhear small children in the grocery store telling their mothers not to buy it."

The negative impacts of bottled water are undeniable, but as a fact sheet the Monitor put out for World Water Day illustrates, the politics of water internationally are extremely complicated. In many parts of the world, bottled water is the only sanitary way to access the resource, and at the moment there is no alternative. The lesson? In places where the water is drinkable, drink it!