Fall is my favorite season. I am a sucker for the beautiful changing foliage and crisp cool air. But the rows of black plastic bags of leaves piled up on curbs in our neighborhoods is disturbing not only to the landscape but also represents our inability to fix things that we know to be harmful to our environment… even when the fix is simple.
It is actually outrageous that we stuff a valuable resource into a non-biodegradable forever-polluting plastic bag which will be discarded as garbage.
Nature’s “waste” should either be left on properties where it can be used as protection for trees and shrubs against winter’s freezing temperatures and storm damage, chopped up with a lawnmower and left on our lawns as a valuable nutrient, or taken away in paper bags to a municipal composting facility where it can breakdown into one of the best soil amendments for our landscapes.
I know the Town of North Hempstead recommends putting leaves in paper bags for pick-up by trash removal services, but considering the environmental hazards of plastic and the limits of landfills, maybe this recommendation should become a regulation.
Other towns do it and I have even toured facilities where leaves and paper bags breakdown together over time in a managed location to eventually provide residents with free compost for their vegetable gardens and other plantings.
I guess this naturally leads to a discussion of plastic waste in general. Again. Food convenience plays a huge role in our choices today, from water bottles to individually packaged snacks, from coffee packed in serving-sized plastic pods to microwave-ready dinners. We produce 78 million tons of plastic packaging every year, about 52 percent of the total plastic produced.
One garbage truck’s worth of plastic goes into the ocean every minute. This is expected to increase to two per minute by 2030 and four per minute by 2050. By 2050, this could mean there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans.
Photodegradation and the motion of the ocean’s currents break the plastic down into smaller and smaller pieces, but it never goes away. And if you have been following the science, you know that contamination of fish with microplastics is being found in more and more species.
Scientists were initially finding microplastics in the digestive tract of fish, but are now finding it in their flesh as well. Several years ago, I created an in-school environmental education program called “I’ll Have the Plastic Fish Special, Please” which was met with some skepticism from students and teachers alike. However, the studies and projections have indeed been proven accurate.
The best environmentally friendly solution to this problem is to avoid single-use plastic items altogether in favor of reusables. Reusable alternatives, such as fabric bags or reusable stainless steel or glass water bottles, coffee cups, and straws can be used over and over again.
When it comes to purchasing dry food staples like oatmeal, beans, flour, rice, and popcorn, try to find a resource for these in bulk, where you can bag them in paper bags. When you get home, you can store them in glass jars, which keeps them fresh and is a constant visual reminder to use them! No plastic.
There is an effort by both Nassau and Suffolk Counties to reduce the use of single-use plastics, and they have both passed laws banning plastic straws and styrofoam (polystyrene) food containers.
They have also made efforts to ban the sale of styrofoam packing peanuts and bubble wrap. If every local municipality and school district on Long Island required their suppliers to use only biodegradable packing materials, it would make a huge difference in the volume of single-use plastics.
Biodegradable packing peanuts are even less expensive than their plastic counterparts! With the stroke of a pen this could be done!
This is all a matter of changing human behavior which is difficult, but possible. The only reason that we have a plastic problem is that we allow that problem to exist. We are the ones buying our water in plastic bottles instead of using reusable containers, or remaining quiet when we attend an event where plastic water bottles and styrofoam coffee cups are set out on the refreshment table.
We are the ones throwing out boxes from Amazon filled with styrofoam peanuts or plastic bags of air, without making any complaint to the giant retailer.
We are the ones buying our fruits and vegetables in plastic wrap and styrofoam trays instead of insisting that our supermarkets pack them in biodegradable paper trays and cellulose bags. (Our produce sections display walls of salad greens packed into hard plastic boxes – who thought this was a good idea?)
And we are the ones that put out our leaves in thick, giant, black plastic bags that will never break down, and stay silent when we see our neighbors do it. Nobody likes confrontation or wants to make trouble, and so we’re all paying the price, leaving it up to our kids to clean up the mess we’ve left for them.
Now more than ever we need politicians to make good laws that may be unpopular at first, but down the road those brave enough to do what’s right will bask in the accolades.
