OPINION: Surviving without single-use plastics

When you live in the U.S., single-use plastic seems abundant. Every time I go to Walmart, the piles of easily broken plastic bags greet me at the end of the check-out counter. When I get take-out food or coffee, it is always served in a Styrofoam, plastic or a plastic-lined paper container. There are a few places that have compostable plastics or papers and many grocery stores encourage their customers to bring reusable shopping bags, but I don’t observe the active practice of these ideas as often as I’d like to.

In the short term, the convenience of this multitude of soon-to-be-useless items may not look like that big of a problem. It’s the future that worries me.

“Left alone, plastics don’t really break down; they just break up,” Courtney Lindwall said in her article “Single-Use Plastics 101.” “Over time, sun and heat slowly turn plastics into smaller and smaller pieces until they eventually become what are known as microplastics.”

Lindwall works with The Natural Resources Defense Council, a non-profit organization advocating for environmental protection. She said microplastics end up in water, wildlife and by extension, human bodies. Accumulated microplastics can cause health issues in wildlife from punctured organs to intestinal blockages and cause endocrine disruptions in humans that could cause hormone imbalances and cancer.

“There will be about 12 billion tons of plastic litter in landfills and the natural environment” by 2050 if plastic consumption and waste management does not change, according to a pamphlet released by the United Nations in 2018, “Single-Use Plastics: A Roadmap for Sustainability.” For comparison, that’s enough to fill more than four million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

This is easily within my lifetime and the lifetime of many University of Idaho students.

I’ve been studying abroad in Germany this semester and to say the least, the attitude toward single-use plastics is substantially different. Plastic bags are rarely offered at check-out. If customers walk in without their own bag, they are either offered the option of a re-usable linen, plastic tote or paper bag.

The coffee shop I frequent encourages customers to use their mugs instead of taking coffee to go by offering one euro in return. Even when you do get coffee to go, everything from the cup to the lid is compostable.

UI has put in an effort toward further sustainability with the composting program through The Hub and the ISUB, but I still see students toting around their groceries in Walmart or WinCo bags — and the lines to grab a coffee at Einstein’s are always long.

One composting program is not enough.

I’d love to see Einstein’s and the campus One World Café location offer mugs for their customers to use. Branded Vandal tote bags could be handed out at as part of the typical orientation welcome package, marketed as a way for students to be more environmentally friendly.

What we need more than anything, however, is more student voices echoing these ideas so we can reach those in power on our campus and beyond. Vote with your voices, Vandals.

Lex Miller can be reached at [email protected]