Plastics

Happy New Year, everyone!

To all those who subscribed to this newsletter after last week’s first issue, thank you so much. I really appreciate knowing you’re out there, each and every one of you. If you liked it and the ones that follow, please feel free to share with your friends.

Welcome to the second issue of Me Who Writes. One thing I’ve learned over the last week is that a weekly newsletter will be too much (for me and you). So expect these to come twice a month.

Here’s a post-holidays gift from my new camera: Okanagan Lake in winter.

This is what my world looked like during Christmas week. No, this is not my yard. It’s the view from a winery we went to for a tasting. I love how everything looks so pristine and sleepy, which is how I felt (sleepy, not pristine).

January is fresh start time for my reading list. Each year, I aim to read 100 books, but holy crow, that’s a lot. In 2022, I read 70 books, about the same as 2021, which was up from 61 in 2020. I keep a reading log not only to keep track of what I’ve read, but also to watch the list grow. (I like lists and like numbers almost as much as I like words.)

These days, I’m reading and writing about plastic. I’m piecing together a new story. New stories mean new characters and new characters need to have occupations as well as narrative purpose. Recently I decided that one of the characters in my new project will work in the plastics industry. She doesn’t want this—she’d rather be a cool architect dreaming up exotic structures at her draft board in a trendy renovated office. But I don’t write romantic comedies and she lives in my head; I’m the boss, so she sells plastic bags to grocery stores.

Last fall, I read two books about the current state of plastics in the world. The first was Plastic Soup by Michael Roscam Abbing. It features bright illustrations that emphasize its argument that plastic has invaded every corner of our planet. Its tone is friendly, informative, not lecture-y. The second was The Plastics Paradox by Chris DeArmitt. This one is a defence of plastic. Its tone is a much sterner version of informative. Two completely different perspectives on plastic, which was exactly what I was looking for. This gives my wannabe-architect character a professional dilemma (she already has a personal one).

After reading these books, I noticed, not for the first time, that most of what goes into our recycling bin is plastic.

Back when we lived in Alberta, I threw everything that wasn’t garbage into recycling and didn’t think about it again. In retrospect, I realize how irresponsible that was. I know now that some of what I dumped into my blue bin wasn’t recyclable. That was the phoniness of the process. It gave me a place to dump stuff, then pat myself on the back and feel like I was doing my part to save the planet.

Now we live in British Columbia. We have two city-provided waste containers in our garage. The black one for garbage is half the size of the blue one for recycling. Recycling is complicated here. What we’re allowed to put in BC’s recycling bins is restricted to paper, cardboard, tin cans, and clean plastic containers (like ketchup bottles and the clear tubs my fresh spinach comes in). No glass and no plastic bags. But we can’t just toss those items, or our styrofoam, into the trash. I store those items on a shelf in the garage, until they threaten to overwhelm that shelf and the one below it. Then I deliver them to the recycling depot. Once I’m there, I have work to do.

The glass jars are easy. They go into a soft-sided bin adjacent to the cardboard crusher but well away from the other bins. I’ve noticed that everyone carefully lowers their items into this bin so they don’t break. I’m impressed. Not once since I’ve been here have I seen a piece of broken glass.

The styrofoam is easy too. It’s sorted by colour. The black or blue or pink styrofoam trays from the bottom of our plastic-wrapped meats go in the coloured styrofoam bin. The white styrofoam trays that come under our plastic-wrapped chicken go in the white styrofoam bin, which is often full. White styrofoam has its own bin because it dominates the styrofoam world. Of course it does.

Then there are the plastics. This is where it gets hard. At the recycling depot, there are three different receptacles for plastics. The wrappers and light filmy bags, the kind we can almost poke our fingers through, like bread bags, go in the Plastic Bags & Overwrap bin.

Let’s say you ordered a new comforter for the bed in your guest room and it arrived wrapped in a grey shipping bag wrapped over a clear product protector with a zipper. You now have two different types of plastics, neither of which can go in our home recycling bin. They both go to the recycling depot, where the zippered plastic bag goes into the Containers bin. But the outer plastic wrapping your new comforter came in doesn’t go there, and it doesn’t go in the plastic bag bin either. It goes into the Other Flexible Plastic Packaging bin, along with the crunchy potato chip bags from the chips you don’t eat unless someone you live with buys them even though you don’t want him to buy them because if they’re in the house you can’t stop eating them.

Yes, it’s confusing. In fact, Geo refuses to deal with it. He just puts all the plastic at our back door and leaves it for me. Fortunately, the recycling depot provides a monitor person to prevent users from gumming up the works. The monitor people know their plastics very well. When I arrived at the depot last week, the monitor person started wandering in my direction before I’d even turned off the car. Not because I’m special, but because it was cold. Business was slow and he probably wanted to keep moving.

What have you got for me this morning, young lady?

I took a deep breath. Why do so many middle-aged men address an older woman they don’t know as young lady? Do they think it’s funny? Do they think we’ll be flattered? Do they think? What’s the best response to this greeting? A big pile of plastic, old boyo?

I scolded myself. Don’t be cranky. Just get out of the car and let him help you.

And he did, which was great because the back of my car was full of cardboard that wouldn’t fit in my blue bin at home. Clearly, we’ve been bedroom shopping too much. (These days, we like to shop on our devices, in bed, propped up by pillows, a cozy blanket over our feet.)

The friendly monitor person surveyed my load and commented that I had sorted well. This made me less cranky. My soft plastics (mostly bread bags) were ready for the Plastic Bags bin. The zippered bag the new comforter for our guest room came in was ready for the Containers bin. The bubble wrap from inside the cardboard boxes from all our bedroom shopping and the plastic wrapping that was around their contents were ready for the Other Flexible Plastic Packaging bin, which was overflowing. My friendly monitor person said “they should call this one The Amazon.” We laughed together. I said that banning single-use plastic bags wasn’t going to make much of a dent in his business. He rolled his eyes. I waved as I drove away.

Then I went shopping in a real store. I took my own bag. I filled it with a plastic-wrapped cucumber, two loaves of bread in bread bags, a plastic sack of kiwis, and some cheddar cheese, wrapped in plastic. Even dutifully showing up with my reusable bag, plastic-free grocery shopping is difficult unless you like all your food in tin cans or cardboard boxes.

A week later, I was back at the recycling depot with another load. The friendly depot monitor strolled over. “Good news,” he said. “This year, they’re combining all three plastic bins into one. They had to. It’s too hard. Everyone gets it wrong.”

I went home to my desk in my cozy office. I dusted the plastic casing around my computer and fondled my mouse, made notes with my plastic pens, and fiddled with my colourful plastic-encased paper clips. Clearly, my plastics research has just begun.

Thanks again for reading. I’ll be back in your inbox in two weeks.

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