The Seattle Times
March 19, 1988 Page A 15, Editorial
REDUCE PLASTICS AT THE SOURCE: A way to ease our garbage problem
Ken Akiva Segan, Special to The Times
One shouldn’t need a Ph.D. in ecology or be the director-lobbyist for an environmental – research
center to see that few have addressed one primary aspect of America’s growing garbage problem: its
source, our retailers and manufacturers.
“If it works in Peoria..” is supposed to be a standard gauge for a myriad of think-tank surveyors, media
people, political consultants, and middle America public-opinion probers.
So what happens in Seattle and its adjacent communities ought to be a comparable barometer.
What DOES happen when I go to my friendly multi-state chain supermarket to buy a dozen grocery
items, followed by a walk to the discount store next door?
Of three types of fruit, each one must be separately bagged and weighed in plastic bags, or the
automated cash registers will break down and the cashiers will overheat. The quart of vanilla ice
cream comes in a heavy-duty plastic container with a reinforced double-duty serrated plastic lid, and
the rice, yogurt, and swiss cheese are all handily packaged in, what else? Plastic!
My fresh fish is already packaged in a beautiful styrofoam-based container with a clear plastic shrink-
wrap, as are the hamburger meat, the turkey legs, and the pork chops further down the counter. I can
see every scale of my evening’s din-din so clearly I could photograph it as my own catch.
The fish in its wrapping are are neatly dropped into their own tidy plastic bag at the cashier’s to keep
the juices from contaminating all the other plastic articles for my fridge. Al these are then tossed into
one grand carry-out plastic bag, and the cashier snorts at me if I ask for a paper bag. After all, this IS
the 1980’s.
Next door, I buy a screwdriver, which I can surely use to extricate all my other purchases from their
containers – were I only able to to get it from its own heavy-duty plastic and card-board shell. It is so
tough I could mail it to friends in Poland, where one can’t buy plastic bags of any sort, and it will
arrive scratchless.
My favorite shampoo is in a a convenient plastic bottle double-sealed for freshness in a nifty box of
cardboard with a se-through label viewer, and the TV antenna I finally buy will be laid waste after I
borrow my upstair neighbor’s hacksaw to free it.
A cashier recently informed me it’s anti-theft packaging. I have no hesitation as a proud knee-jerk
liberal to say that I yearn for the days when packaging was simpler and didn’t require renting a 2-ton
truck to open a box of fuses.
A moment of glorious happiness occurred three years back, when I was living near where I work in
downtown Seattle, and I frequently shopped after work. It was late, and I was really beat, and the
cashier at this high-volume market, like me, had evidently spent her work day dealing with John and
Jane Public.
I’d read a report that the Italian government had enacted legislation to ban the use of plastic bags
there, to take effect several years hence. This occupied my mind all day. As this store had recently
begun to use the new plastic bags with their metal holder racks, they would ask if I preferred paper or
plastic. (At none of the supermarkets I shop at now do they still ask. They automatically bag in plastic).
So there I was. I looked up and said “Paper. Ya know, it takes 2,000 years for a plastic bag like that to
decompose. The Italian government is gonna ban them.”
She looked at me intently, and I could tell she thought I was half-baked. What we used to call a real
live one back in the good old days of paper grocery bags. As I picked up my paper bag of goodies, I swung around to hear her yelling out
“Harrrrrrry! I’m taking a break! NNNNOW!”
It was while living in Scotland last year for five months last year that I heard of New York’s barge of
garbage floating around in search of a roost. People love a good story abroad, especially one that
originates in America. They love us and our money, but they don’t love our garbage.
It was this well-publicized event that gave rise to my thoughts on how we can best deal with our
leftovers. Incinerators? New and improved landfills? Outer space, the last frontier? God forbid, ship it
to the Antarctic? Greater recycling? Reduce it at its source?
Yes, the last was the one answer I hadn’t seen addressed.
The American public accepts what’s dished out out to them, whether it be what they watch on the
tube, or what kind of garbage they take home. The manufacturers produce it, the retailers sell it, and
we cart it home with us in our station wagons and backpacks. Plastics are big.
It wasn’t like that a few years ago, though. Cutting back on some of this waste will do a significant
part in reducing our overflow.
If the retailers continue to pack all our purchases in plastic bags anyway, why not a few changes in
the public interest? Let the clerks bag in paper unless one specifically requests plastic.
The argument has arisen that plastic carry bags are great for seniors and the disabled. Why not
promote community education and library patronage? Our libraries have the highest patron usage per
capita in the nation, and there is a never-ending need for bags to carry all those books,
videocassettes, and compact discs.
Why couldn’t the stores print “Support Seattle or King County Library – READ!” or “This bag will hold
library books!!” on their bags?
If you’re like me, you don’t throw away all those bags you accumulate when you buy ice cream and
pretzels, but you toss them in the closet. I have enough bags to wrap Columbia Center. It’s time I fill
up the station wagon and haul them down to the library.
If the manufacturers and giant retailers won’t do their part to keep our land beautiful, at least we
can. Ten thousand letters to your grocers and state legislators will start the ball rolling. While you’re
at it, ask your grocer why he’s opposed to plastic recycling containers in the parking lots.
Paper or plastic? What do YOU want? What would you like your children or grandchildren to want?
More garbage, or a wee bit more space for clean water, parks and air?
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Ken Akiva Segan, a Seattle artist, says “I have no environmental degrees, have no government post, sit on no watchdog agencies or advisory groups, am not in the garbageindustry. But I shop, shlep it home and throw it out.”