Climate Column: How to reduce plastic waste

NATASHA JULIANA

ARGUS-COURIER COLUMNIST

July 31, 2024

I took the Plastic Free July Challenge and it was harder than I thought it would be. This global campaign has collectively prevented more than three billion pounds of plastic waste over the last five years — more than all the world’s biggest cleanup efforts combined. And as they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Reducing my use of plastic has been pretty easy. I buy pantry staples in bulk using cloth bags, fill up glass jars with soaps for home and office at Refill Mercantile, only use wood cutting boards, take my stainless steel travel mug to the coffee shop, and even tote around a set of flatware so I won’t need a plastic fork.

But when I started trying to avoid all plastic, it seemed almost impossible. To be fair, the official Plastic Free July Challenge doesn’t ask us to give up all plastic, but since I’d already tackled the easy stuff, I thought going all in would be a great stretch goal. My biggest hurdle came down to food. And given all the health repercussions, that’s the last place we should be using plastic.

If you’ve watched the documentary “The Story of Plastic,” you already know that plastic is made out of fossil fuels and that fossil fuel companies, recognizing that we are phasing out their use as an energy source, are doubling down on the plastic industry. They are currently investing billions of dollars in new manufacturing plants, often sited near low-income communities and people of color, with such serious health consequences that one 85-mile stretch in Louisiana is now called “Cancer Alley.”

Our addiction to plastic is catching up with us. Shocking reports are coming out about the widespread reach of microplastics and nanoplastics — now found in the deepest trenches of the ocean and the highest peaks of Mount Everest. They are in our air, our water, our food supply, and even our bodies. That’s because every piece of plastic ever created still exists; it just degrades into smaller and smaller particles that can then make it into our bodies, our bloodstream, and even across the blood-brain barrier. The long-term health effects of exposure to these plastic particles, along with the slew of added chemicals, have scientists very concerned.

Our contact with plastic ranges from toothbrush bristles to fake grass to synthetic clothes, but one logical place to start reducing our exposure is with food packaging. In my attempt to go plastic free, my biggest challenge was takeout food. If I forgot to bring my lunch to work and wanted to grab something to go, it was very hard to avoid plastic, whether in the lining of the brown paper box or the tiny plastic salad dressing cup.

The takeout food industry is wonderful for convenience, but struggles with disposables. In Petaluma, we have opportunities to test a few solutions to this problem.

A three-month pilot called The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project from the NextGen Consortium will begin on Aug. 5. More than 30 restaurants will swap their single-use cups for to-go reusable cups to all customers at no cost, and return bins will be made available across the city so they can be collected, washed, and used again.

During that same time frame, downtown’s Lunchette, with its mission of providing locally sourced grab-and-go food with zero waste, will be conducting its own returnable bowl experiment using Sparkl Reusables, a company working to implement reuse and zero waste systems in the Bay Area.

These programs tend to face similar challenges. Although metal or glass would be more recyclable and healthier, they are heavier, more expensive, and take more energy for initial production. Reusable plastic can reduce our dependence on single-use plastic, but it doesn’t address the life cycle issues. And the environmental and health impacts of fossil fuel extraction and refining on the front end, and escalating plastic pollution on the back end, can’t be ignored.

Although both programs landed on reusable plastic, our larger goal is to find ways to encourage reuse without the need for plastic at all. Their results could show that return rates are high enough to warrant continuing the program with higher-quality metal — or perhaps, with this small push, we will find it is easy enough to bring our own reusables.

Kate Daly, the managing director for the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners, which is running Petaluma’s NextGen reusable cup pilot program, shared with me some of their data from more than 90 bring-your-own-cup initiatives across the U.S. Although only 9% of Americans report bringing their own cup when buying coffee to go, the study found that higher BYOC rates are possible. Interestingly, 13% of gas station and convenience store customers report almost always using their own reusable cups for coffee or tea. Smaller, local coffee shops and restaurants have reported up to 20% BYOC rates when nearby restaurants also offer BYOC. In addition, they found that charging $0.25-$0.50 for a disposable cup was more impactful than offering the same amount as a discount for bringing your own.

“Our goal is to demonstrate to the food service sector that encouraging BYO can be easy, so that they can play their part in making reuse accessible and inclusive for their customers,” Daly said.

Naomi Crawford, owner of Lunchette, shared a similar stance. “The whole goal is to create culture change so that we learn to bring our own,” she said. “Having these plastic materials is not ideal, but if it will shift behavior in the end, then it was worth it.”

While Lunchette is offering Sparkl returnable plastic containers over the next three months, they are also providing a 5% discount for bringing your own containers from home, giving us an opportunity to eat out of healthier materials like metal, wood, ceramic or glass.

To incentivize this shift to BYO, Cool Petaluma volunteers have been sewing pouches for storing travel flatware at our second Monday of the month Mending Circles, a collaboration with Blue Zones Project Petaluma. You can help make more at our next event on Aug. 12 (go to coolpetaluma.org for details). And if you’re a Lunchette customer, you can get your free Cool Petaluma utensil kit by bringing in your own container the week of Aug. 19, while supplies last.

Ultimately, we need to build a world where instead of bad choices, people are presented with only good options — good for the planet and good for our health.

Natasha Juliana is campaign director of Cool Petaluma. She can be reached at natashaj@coolpetaluma.org. For information on how to get involved, visit coolpetaluma.org.