When Jill gave up single-use plastic

Jill Replogle (laist.com, Feb. 1, 2019); Ashley Wells, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

My so-called "plastic-free" life. I tried it for a month. Here's what happened...

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Single-use plastic (Jill Replogle/LAist)

My family of four gave up single-use plastic for the month of January. I mean, our execution wasn't perfect, but we gave it a good shot.

Why did we do it? We did it because 450 years-to-never is the estimated time it takes for some plastics to break down in the environment -- and because scientists estimate more than 18 billion pounds of plastic winds up in our ocean every year.

Microplastics have been found in the air we breathe and the water we drink. It's been found in the stomachs of deep sea creatures, birds, and turtles. It pollutes beaches and rivers and, well, just about every ecosystem on earth.

And while recycling is great, as plastic waste researcher Jenna Jambeck says, "The most sustainable thing you can do is not generate the trash in the first place."

Plastic has many important uses, no doubt. But covering the plastic fork that I didn't need in the first place is not one of them, at least not for us.

So we tried going cold on single-use plastic during the month of January. Here's how it went. More

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