What's the Cure for Pre-Existing Plastic?

Some imperfect solutions for getting rid of the stuff

If you have taken the Plastic Free July pledge to break up with single-use plastic this month, you may be wondering what to do with existing plastic in your home—the plastic wrap, the baggies, the food containers. All of us who have decided to go plastic-free or low-waste or zero-waste—or whatever you want to call this lifestyle—have faced this dilemma.

Sadly, I have no magic spell to make all the existing plastic disappear. If I did, we could simply wave away the plastic pollution choking our oceans. But I do have some imperfect ideas for dealing with the plastic you’ve already amassed. Please keep in mind, however, that the aim of Plastic Free July is to cut down on single-use plastic items, not throw away all your plastic hangers and replace them with new wooden ones.

Use it until it wears out

We have some durable plastics that I had bought well before we went plastic-free, such as my food processor with its plastic bowl. In an ideal world, I suppose I could use a mortar and pestle for foods like pesto or perhaps a stainless steel food processor designed for a commercial kitchen. These things aren’t happening—for now at least. I’ll continue to use my food processor with its plastic bowl until it finally completely breaks down (it’s getting there). Then I’ll try to figure out how to dispose of the thing responsibly.

You could continue to use your plastic baggies to store food in the freezer or elsewhere until they break down. Or, if you’re concerned with the potentially harmful chemicals in plastics coming into contact with your food, use them to store non-food items until the plastic breaks down. 

Donate it to an organization that will use it

You may feel as though you are passing your trash onto someone else but lots of organizations use plastic so they may as well use the plastic that you no longer want and buy that much less. Like I said, these are imperfect solutions. Perhaps a food bank, shelter, office or school would be happy to have that partial box of unused plastic baggies you no longer want.

Contact your local waste management department and ask questions

Some municipalities may not pick up certain items at the curb but will accept them if you drop them off. Search online for what your city accepts or call your waste management department and ask.

I recently realized that my city picks up Tetra Paks. Still, I won’t buy these. They waste resources and I can make better homemade versions of anything I’ve seen packaged in them. (See my recipe index here.)

Send your plastic stuff to Terracycle

Terracycle sells sturdy cardboard boxes for customers to fill with various plastic items that municipal recycling programs do not typically accept, such as empty toothpaste tubes, toys and sports gear, baby food pouches, baby gear and so on. You order the box, fill it up and send it back to the company to recycle, using a prepaid shipping label. While some Terracycle programs cost nothing, its zero-waste boxes are very expensive.

As I’ve written in the past, recycling is a last resort. But the plastic exists already and much like a nuclear meltdown or oil spill, we have to deal with the man-made disaster as best as we can. Ideally, corporations would have been packaging their wares in reusable items all along. (In California, they will have to start cleaning up after themselves.)

Buying a Terracycle box feels to me a bit like buying an indulgence to reduce my time in plastic purgatory. But there is no perfect solution. Go here to read more about my experience with Terracycle.

Wash your synthetic clothing less often

Wait, what? I thought we were discussing plastic baggies, not my wardrobe.

Synthetic fabrics go by many different names (kind of the way sugar does): polyester, rayon, acrylic, nylon and so on. When you wash these, they shed microscopic plastic fibers—microplastics—into our waterways. A typical load can shed 700,000 of these tiny plastic fibers.

You could donate unwanted synthetics to Goodwill. However, then someone else will just wash them and you’ve essentially offshored your plastic microfiber waste. On the other hand, if that customer doesn’t buy your synthetic clothing, they will buy other synthetic clothing. So you’ll have to weigh all of these factors. Donating synthetics adds more synthetics to the pipeline but I have donated some myself. (Having been raised in a very strict Catholic home, I’m pre-dispositioned to weigh all of these factors.) Just do your best!

(Go here for more info on low-waste, efficient laundering.)

Look for a creative reuse center near you to take your plastic stuff

These centers accept all kinds of materials that artists, schools and other makers can reuse for their art or craft.

In Montreal, Concordia University’s Centre for Creative Reuse (CUCCR), for example, accepts donations from within the university for a variety of items—including certain plastic items—that you may not know what to do with:

Our spaces currently feature a variety of material storage and displays that showcase the diverse materials coming out of offices, departments, studios, and labs on our campus. A variety of wood, glass, metal, fibers, office supplies, plastics, paper, tools and equipment, and arts & crafts supplies fill the shelves.

Similarly, SCRAP in San Francisco has been diverting useful materials from landfills for over 40 years. Check out this list of what SCRAP accepts.

Your city may have a similar organization. These centers won’t, however, take just anything like a garbage dump. So ask what they do accept before you drop off your stuff. You may also have to schedule your donation. Every center varies.

Find a support group for your waste dilemmas

If you have a plastic dilemma, many other low-wasters have faced the same one and someone out there has figured out how to minimize or solve the problem. Plus, if you join a group, you’ll meet the nicest people and help build community. You may find a group through Meetup or Facebook. Or you could start your own group!

“There is no away.” — Annie Leonard

I hope this newsletter doesn’t give the impression that there is an away for all the plastic the world produces or that we can recycle our way out of the plastic pollution crisis. Neither is true. (Go here for more on how recycling works.) The above ideas are last-ditch attempts to responsibly dispose of existing plastic, not reasons to buy more of it.

Speaking of buying, you may want some reusable items as you reduce plastic consumption, such as a reusable water bottle or safety razor. But throwing out all of our plastic stuff to replace it with all new reusable stuff not only clogs landfills and costs a small fortune, it doesn’t address the root of our waste problem—consumerism. A greener version of consumerism is consumerism wearing a halo. Our governments, industries and lifestyles require drastic changes, not green bandaids.

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