Plastic fast. Week 4.

Three days ago, I ran out of dish soap. I knew it would happen before Lent was over, and I had been pondering my options.

1) Live without dish soap for two more weeks and try to convince my husband that we really don't need it.

2) Just go buy dish soap in a plastic jug and justify it by saying that the plastic jugs are "recyclable."

3) Try to make dish soap. 

Yesterday, I did a combination of 2 and 3. I bought some dish soap in case my experiment failed, and I bought the ingredients to make dish soap. Last night, while watching Washington play Marquette, my son and I stirred together shaved soap, glycerine (which, full disclosure, I also had to buy in plastic) and lemon juice. This morning I used the filmy, watery stuff to wash dishes. I can't say that I was thrilled, although my son thought it was a pretty fun science experiment. 

While I was washing the dishes, I started thinking about the bigger picture of this Lenten experience. The experiment is a fairly honest reckoning. In that Lenten spirit of reckoning, I've had to face myself, my weaknesses, my limits, my destructive and harmful relationship to my planet. I've had to take a hard look at it. It's not that I made any tremendous improvements, and I certainly have nothing to brag about. But at least I've had to be honest about my relationship to plastic and its effects. Now it is time to think about how I will carry the experiment forward. 

Comments

[Carol]

Hi Amy,

I've enjoyed following your 'plastic-avoidance' blogs. However, you do seem to be awfully hard on yourself.

"In that Lenten spirit of reckoning, I've had to face myself, my weaknesses, my limits, my destructive and harmful relationship to my planet."

For what it's worth, here's another way of looking at plastic:

I don't know who invented plastic, but whoever it was, they probably didn't intend for it to harm the planet, but to improve the human experience by making something better--safer, cleaner, easier, cheaper, more efficient, etc. After all, paper requires cutting down trees, metals require digging big holes in the earth, etc., and just about everything has unintended consequences. And, think of all the good uses of plastic, like IV bags and tubing that allow medicine and blood to be administered anywhere from a battlefield to a broken street filled with earthquake victims, instead of requiring a hospital.

In other words, the inventor(s) of plastic (and just about everything else, otherwise why would anyone bother inventing anything?) probably believed they were making a positive contribution to human progess, not blind-siding it. So, instead of feeling bad about an occasional slip, think of those slips as paying homage to the inventor's nobler intentions by receiving--even inadvertently--one, or some, of the benefits they originally intended. Just a thought.

Now that that's said, it's time to focus on a really important and time-honored spring ritual: hiding jelly beans and chocolate bunnies.

Happy Spring!

Carol

[Vivienne]

Hi Amy ....... did you not consider simply adding a small handful of washing soda to the hot dish water? Also salt is good a cleaning pots or stains off cups etc ... all that is needed is to soften the water - make it slippery - (detergent is a modern invention and not essential!) Of course you could always go down to the river and use sand and lots of running water to clean the pots.

[Amy]

Thanks for the advice, Vivienne. I'll try it. Although I admit that I really do want bubbles to go along with my dish soap.

I think the point for me is not to ban plastic from my existence, but to understand what plastic is necessary and what is simply mindless waste that is of no good to me and no good to anyone else. What stands in the way of a full life? That seems to be what I am always asking.