Recycling...
During my lifetime, it’s impossible to count how many people have called me crazy for one reason or another. Most recently, a woman told me I was out of my mind for putting my used and dirty plastic bags in the washing machine to clean and recycle. Honestly, I don’t know why everyone doesn’t. They’re reusable over and over again. This way, after they’re cleaned and dried, I can grab a plastic bag to put fruit from the garden and exchange it for fish or other goods without ever using a new single-use bag.
I also put things like broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce in plastic bags to store in the fridge because they stay fresher for longer. When the vegetable is gone, I toss the bag in the wash and by the time I’ve restocked the vegetables, I have clean bags to put the fresh ones in without using new bags every time. I also make stacks of gluten-free tortillas for the week and put those in a plastic zip-lock bag to keep them fresh, then wash the bag when the tortillas are finished. The strip of plastic I use in the tortilla press is also washed. It seems silly to discard it just because there’s a crumb of raw corn flour stuck to it. I feel like washing the bags is a normal thing to do because single-use plastic is such a huge issue in the world and I’d rather not contribute to it.
Single-use plastics can take anywhere from 20-500 years to decompose, depending on the type of plastic it is and how much sunlight it's been exposed to. Mostly, the type of bags I’m washing can take 10-20 years to break down. Why toss them out if they’re going to last that long? It’s true plastic bags can break or get holes in them. So what happens then? Years ago, a friend came up with an amazing solution for this too. In the photo below, there’s a four-liter oil bottle filled with plastic bags. It takes about a year to fill one of these bottles at my house because I’m consistently avoiding using new bags unless I have no choice. Putting non-recyclables in the bottle means they won’t end up in the ocean for turtles and dolphins to choke to death on. There are two ways to dispose of the bottles when they’re full. One is to put them out for the garbage truck to pick up. This way, the plastic ends up in the landfill and not in the ocean after being blown around by the wind. The other is to pack the bags down really hard with a stick and make sure each bottle is super full then use them as building material. Smaller bottles packed with plastic bags make excellent bricks.
The plastic bags I clean and reuse go in the washing machine with my clothes. I use cold water to wash and rinse and add laundry detergent as usual. I have to make sure there’s no water inside the bags when I put them in the extractor, then I hang them up to dry with their open tops hanging down. It’s not more or less work than any other laundry and it means I always have a bag handy for whatever I need. There are usually a few in the cloth shopping bag I always carry with me in case I need them for something like loose strawberries or rice when I’m out shopping. Sometimes, someone else needs a bag and I can take one out and give it to them, knowing it’s already been recycled a dozen times. What they do with it isn’t my business, however I do suggest they use it again if they can. Even the fishy bags go into the washing machine, after being rinsed first, of course.
This might sound like it’s a lot of effort for very little reward. It isn’t. I’ve become so accustomed to recycling and reusing whatever I can, conserving water, reducing waste, shopping consciously, producing compost, and feeding an organic garden that it has become second nature. I don’t even think about it, I just do it. The planet would be so much cleaner if we all did it, but convincing people I’m not insane for washing my bags is not on my agenda right now. Everyone on Earth who has similar concerns about contamination is already doing whatever they can to reduce plastic waste too. Maybe we are all crazy. Or maybe we aren’t.
I’m also fully aware the 80,000+ tons of bombs dropped on Gaza have negated all the tree-planting efforts around the world to mitigate climate change and reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Even if we could have planted the necessary three trillion trees we need to recreate that balance, these endless wars around the globe would quickly destroy many of them. With violent conflicts currently taking place in fifty countries, and bombs being dropped in Ukraine, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Myanmar, Congo, and too many other countries to name, any efforts to combat climate change and bring down global temperatures are being [deliberately?] thwarted all over the planet. It seems like the world’s weapons manufactures would gleefully have us fighting each other over anything and everything for eternity.
“Every worm, every insect, every animal is working
for the ecological well-being of the planet.
Only we humans, who claim to be the most
intelligent species here, are not doing that.”
~ Sadhguru
So maybe I am out of my mind for doing whatever it takes to reduce single-plastic use and stop turtles and dolphins from choking on my garbage, but however mad it seems, it feels important to do it anyway. If I can save the life of one dolphin or prevent a whale from filling its belly with garbage, it’s worth it. Even if my efforts are only a microscopic dot in a vast sea of possibilities to protect and save our planet, I won’t stop doing whatever it takes. In truth, nothing I do will change anything. It doesn’t matter how many plastic bags I put in the washing machine, plastic contamination isn’t going away. It would take every single one of us, all eight billion of us to care enough about our planet to consciously make that change and allow it to become the norm. Even so, despite the futility of all my best efforts, I couldn’t live comfortably with myself if I didn’t wash my plastic bags and reuse them as many times as possible, so call me crazy if you want, but I’m going to keep doing it anyway…