“It’s a one-year experiment, and it’s extreme. No soda cans, no water and plastic bottles, no buying new products, cancelling our magazine and newspaper subscriptions, no throwaway plastic razors, no airplanes, no subways, no taxis, no elevators… Is it possible to have a good life without wasting so much? The average American creates 16 hundred pounds of trash a year. We’re trying to reduce that to zero.” Colin Beavan asks this question and sets himself (and his family) this goal.
Throughout the documentary we can see all the sacrifices they have to make to achieve this. It is incredibly to see how everything we do and consume in our daily lives has such a negative effect on the environment.
It is almost impossible to buy anything that is not wrapped in plastic. Meat, fruit, vegetables… In some cases, this packaging is necessary. But so much of it is wasted you start to think, do we really need it here? Banana packs come in plastic bags. Cucumbers are individually wrapped in plastic film. Why? What good is it? Nature has already designed the perfect packaging for each fruit and vegetable. There is no need to wrap it around plastic.
If I go to Tesco and want to buy a croissant from their bakery, I need to use a small plastic bag to put it inside and take it to the checkout. I tend to eat the croissant straight after this, so I throw away the plastic bag. How long have I used this bag? 30 seconds? Maybe a minute? It will take hundreds of years for the bag to decompose, just for one minute of purpose.
This is a first step we as consumers need to take. Differentiate between essential and non-essential packaging. Supermarkets need to take action and stop wasting packaging when it’s not necessary, and if they don’t, we should stop buying those products until they do.
I don’t think it’s possible to live in a world with no packaging at all, or if it is, it would be very hard and inconvenient. But surely we can invent packaging that is reusable, refillable or even better, not plastic at all, can we not? Of course. But would companies want to change to different types of packaging if they are more expensive? Would this be reflected on the final price of the product? Would consumers be willing to pay more for the same product just because the packaging is not made out of plastic? It is important to ask these questions now and look for an alternative to single use plastic packaging before it is too late. I think we can all start by asking ourselves, what can I do?