my life in cellophane

August is a great month to explore lifestyle & to minimize. It's one of those rare months where not much is needed to survive and enjoy the world.
The weather is nice, the sun is shining, ice cream trucks are ding-a-linging. Gardens are exploding, lemonade is abundant & being inside of a store to shop seems anti-adventure.

This month, August 2008, the Ramshackle House will go above and beyond pure enjoyment and summer break laissez-faire. We will challenge our consumer habits, which have gotten quite serious, while proactively embodying our beliefs. We will not buy anything plastic for the entire month. This crew of five is looking to get a clear assessment of our dependence on the petroleum baby, while everyone is committed to not consuming new plastic, some folks will avoid using plastic in all reasonable ways.

As a lover of rigidity, I was originally going to pursue not using plastic at all for the month. But as I began to investigate and notice the world I live in, it became clear that I might not be able to function at the most basic level if not for plastic parts. This computer, key bike components, telephones, the soles of my shoes, light switches, the lenses of my glasses are just a few daily critical plastic pieces of my life. Pervasiveness seems to have made plastic essential, at least irreplaceable.

An even trickier reality is that the more I take in my surroundings, the more I gain clarity that plastic is not inherently a problem -- plastic provides unequaled benefits in terms of flexibility, weight, durability all rolled into one. It's monopoly & mass production that present the problem. This is where I feel uneasy and resentful toward plastic.

Plastic is not black & white, it's complicated. There are benefits at the same time that there are devastating consequences. Which is why Project Plastic has a unique appeal to me -- the nuances of tough choices, the admission of addiction, the complication of need vs distress. This is the value of Project Plastic. Let's get to the bottom of how much we rely on this unsustainable, toxic & critical substance made from petroleum and destined to outlive us all in the middle of a landfill.

The guidelines are simple -- members of the Ramshackle will not purchase anything made of plastic, containing plastic parts, plastic packaging or plastic inerds for the month of August. We won't stock up on plastic items before August but we are willing to use things that we already own that might contain plastic. Plastic is a broad term -- there are entire volumes of books dedicated to the various wonders and incarnations of man-made threaded polymer strands [aka, plastic]. For our purposes, plastic is the obvious, visual, commonly identifiable substance that takes a million different forms.

We've been collecting all of the new plastic we've brought into the house from the month of July. It's not comprehensive -- i threw away too many iced coffee cups to count. But it does give a good sense. We'll also collect all the plastic that we bring in for August to compare.

Here's the fun obstacles that we are facing with Drastic Plastic. Families are coming to town! Moms, dads, sisters and brothers and staying at our house and may or may not be excited about the idea of leaving their water bottles at the door. Many people will be gone for weeks in August, will Drastic Plastic survive on the road and over vacation? Will smokers go to great lengths to get non-plastic encased tobacco or will they be extra moody this month from severe withdrawals?

With drastic plastic there are adventures and drama ahead of us, no doubt.