Earth Day: How to reduce plastic pollution

I am typing this story on a plastic keyboard, while sitting at a plastic desk, wearing plastic eyeglasses.

Plastic is everywhere.

Lightweight, versatile and inexpensive to produce, plastic helps our lives run smoothly. But we are all way too dependent on "disposable" plastic, which I'm putting in quotes because plastic is the opposite of disposable. It breaks down into smaller and smaller parts, becoming microscopic waste. Unless it is burned, plastic never really goes away.

Plastic pollution clogs our waterways, kills marine animals, chokes our environment and seeps into our very bodies, absorbed in chemical form.

Here are three forms of single-use plastic that we can easily avoid:

1. Straws

Next time you are at a restaurant, a sporting event or a coffee shop, look around and count how many people are using plastic straws. Multiply those straws on a global scale and picture them, piled up like sinister noodles.

Plastic straws choke sea turtles and pollute the land and waterways. They are not recyclable because the form of plastic used is too weak, and the interiors of straws are usually contaminated with liquid.

Luckily for the planet, plastic straws are becoming uncool.

In 2013, the National Park Service determined that Americans use 500 million straws daily. Park restaurants and concession stands now encourage guests to go "straw free."

New this spring at the New York Aquarium on Coney Island is the Oceanside Grill, with a menu of sustainably sourced seafood. The restaurant has a "no single-use plastics" policy, meaning no plastic straws, cups, utensils or bags. Instead, Oceanside Grill uses paper and compostable materials.

Other New York destinations also have taken the pledge to go straw-free, including the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Staten Island Children's Museum and Queens Botanical Garden. 

Seattle's ban on plastic straws and utensils goes into effect July 1. The ban on utensils was approved in 2010, but the city waited until alternatives were available so that businesses could comply with the measure. 

If you need a straw due to a medical condition, or simply to avoid making a mess in the car, consider purchasing stainless steel straws, which can be used over and over, or compostable or paper straws, which biodegrade. Keep them in your car or your handbag.

The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society will even send you a free re-usable straw if you sign an on-line pledge to go straw-free: giveasip.nyc.

2. Bags

Plastic bags are the poster child for plastic pollution, billowing in the breeze, tangling in trees.

Use recyclable grocery bags, made of paper, cloth or recycled plastic. Question why your supermarket displays bunches of bananas wrapped in plastic bags.

When you're caught unprepared and must use a plastic bag, reduce the amount you use: Don't let the cashier double-bag your groceries. Don't use a bag when you only buy a box of Band-Aids at the drug store. 

Bring plastic bags back to department stores, supermarkets and dry cleaners, to be re-used or recycled.

The Oregon-based recycling company Waste Management notes that supermarket grocery bags first were introduced in 1977. Somehow, we all managed to do without them in the old days. Seattle banned plastic bags in 2011, and consumers pay 5 cents for paper bags at stores. Paper bag production also is wasteful, but paper eventually biodegrades. Plastic does not, so it presents a long-term problem. 

3. Bottles

Single-use bottles can be recycled in most communities. But plastic recycling cannot keep up with the demand for bottles. Best to avoid bottles by using your own re-fillable container for water. Choose aluminum cans or glass bottles for soda, iced tea and other beverages. According to the Recycling Coalition of Utah, using a refillable bottle can eliminate the need for 100 disposable bottles per year. 

If all this seems to you like a drop in the bucket, in the face of the enormous scale of global pollution, you are correct. But each of us must start somewhere. 

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