Drowning in plastics

I’m increasingly horrified at how much plastic packaging I bring home. As we learn more about how plastic pervades our environment, I’m thinking I need to do more to reduce my plastic use, but how? It’s hard to imagine buying food without plastic bags, wraps, trays, and containers. In the garden, too, I accumulate an increasing collection of plastic pots and other equipment.

Reusing plastic boxes that held salad greens as mini-greenhouses

    Some recent news stories about plastic are really scary and discouraging. We’ve been hearing for years about floating islands of plastic in the ocean with fish, seabirds, and other creatures taking in plastic waste from the water.

Albatross chick with a belly full of plastic-photo NOAA

This year I was alarmed to learn that the air and soil too are polluted with microplastics—bits smaller than 5 millimeters, most microscopic. Of the increasing mass of plastics we humans are manufacturing—currently more than 300 million tons per year—only nine percent is recycled. The rest breaks down into smaller and smaller bits. These tiny pieces of plastic fall from the sky with rain and snow, and not just in populated areas. A recent study of the Arctic found surprisingly high microplastic concentrations there too, with more released as polar ice melts.
 

Arctic Sea ice in 2011-photo NASA

    Scientists estimate that we’re ingesting tens of thousands of microplastic particles in our food and water every year. Health effects aren’t known yet, but it’s thought that lifelong plastic ingestion can harm the immune system. If you drink your water from plastic bottles, you’re taking in four times more plastic than if you drink tap water. At least that’s easily correctable. Other animals don’t have any way to avoid the plastic we’ve so liberally sprinkled throughout their environment, so they’ll ultimately suffer more.

Water with a side of microplastics

    I don’t know exactly how I’ll kick my plastic habit in the garden, but I’m making it a goal. If you’ve found solutions, I’d love to hear about them. I just watched a helpful video from The Old Farmer’s Almanac about alternatives to plastic in the garden. Some suggestions: wooden seed trays; seedling pots made from natural fiber or recycled paper; trees, shrubs and perennials bought bareroot instead of in plastic pots; homemade soil amendments and potting mix to replace bagged products; and metal or wooden plant supports instead of plastic netting.

Tomato seedlings in newspaper pots

    Many of these measures would involve a loss of convenience. Plastic pots and trays are light and easy to wash and store. Large ceramic containers for summer plantings are prettier but much more cumbersome and expensive than their plastic counterparts. Avoiding plastic pots at the garden center will severely limit plant shopping options. It feels like time to start turning away from plastic, though. If I could buy and use 10 percent less next year, at least that would be a start.

Can I garden with less of this stuff?

    Much of my garden equipment is plastic: wheelbarrow, large pots, barrels. I should use this equipment for as long as possible to amortize the embedded carbon, but I think I’ll stop planting vegetables in those plastic pots. I’d just as soon avoid adding microplastics to our homegrown tomatoes.