Minimizing Waste – My Plastic-free Life

This post goes out to anyone with children, and my brother. I commend him on his efforts to minimize the amount of waste he produces. Recently he abolished his kitchen garbage can, theorizing:

If there’s nowhere to put the garbage, maybe I won’t create garbage.

Everything is recycled, composted, or taken immediately down to the dumpster. Knowing that the dumpster is outside in cold Chicago weather, and not wanting to store garbage on the kitchen counter, this seems like a viable protocol for minimizing waste production in your home. Why is it important to consume less and minimize waste production?

Beth Terry will tell you. After seeing the image below, her priorities in life were reorganized and she created My Plastic-free Life. The photo showed the carcass of a dead, baby sea bird. The nesting chicks are fed lethal quantities of plastic (bottle caps, cigarette lighters, even a toothbrush) by their parents, who mistake the floating trash for food as they forage over the vast polluted Pacific Ocean.

If you want to see more, photographer Chris Johnson has a collection. This photo makes me sick. How bout you? As Beth puts it:

I looked at my own life and realized that through my unconscious overconsumption, I was personally contributing to the suffering of creatures I hadn’t even known existed.

Beth decided to stop buying plastic and her website was born. Thank you Beth! Along the same story line–pollution–photographer Erika Hildegard Johnson emailed me an article this week about industrial chemicals, pollutants and pesticides found in newborns. And, here’s more information about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Please start paying attention to these issues of pollution, especially if you have (or want) children. Their future and happiness depends on it.

Buy less. Waste less. Save more lives. Thanks for reading, letUbeU.