Plastic. It’s ubiquitous, and yet somehow invisible. Whose problem is it anyway? Yours? Mine? Theirs?
Plastic stresses me out, and yet I’m grateful for it; it has helped save one of my children’s lives and makes my life easier and safer in countless ways. It’s nearly impossible to avoid and literally never goes away; plastic can break down into tiny pieces — the dreaded microplastics — but it never biodegrades. Thus, it’s everywhere, even in our bodies.
The size of the plastic problem became apparent to me 15 years ago while visiting Bali. I remember being disgusted by the amount of plastic strewn across the island’s southern beaches; it tangled around your legs in the water. It was disturbing. Maybe that’s why it bothered me so much to find plastic bottles and caps in the sand and washing up onshore at Miramar beach when the Miramar Hotel first opened. It felt like Bali in Santa Barbara. The source of the problem was single use plastic bottles offered to all hotel guests on the beach and across the hotel property. A new source of plastic was flooding my hometown beach. Fortunately, when asked for change, the Miramar team swiftly transitioned the entire property away from plastic bottles; guests are now offered aluminum bottles of water. Is it a perfect fix? No. But at least aluminum is highly recyclable (and easier to spot in sand). Plastic, as we know, never goes away.
Fifteen years later, I find myself back in Bali with our four young kids. We are currently on a remote beach on the Northwest coast and everything about it is beautiful; huge: powerful waves in crystalline water, black volcanic sand rimmed in palms as far as you can see. But all my kids are talking about is plastic. If you look closely, bottle caps, toothbrushes, and tiny take-away bags speckle the beach. Closer to the center of the island where we are living, four days of heavy, tropical rain washed so much plastic downstream that a plastic bottle dam has formed. It’s impossible to miss. Plastic is a huge problem here.
What if Santa Barbara’s beloved footpaths were spotted with plastic like a Balinese beach? A bottle cap here, a ziplock there. What if every time it rained, our creeks became damned with plastic? Is that what we need to see the problem at home?
Widespread, meaningful community efforts in Bali are working to reduce plastic consumption here. Communities regularly organize trash pick-up walks, customers demand biodegradable packaging from businesses, clever programs reuse and remake plastic into useful objects. But eliminating the source of plastic feels like the only real way to solve the problem. The Miramar didn’t ask guests to stop using or recycle their plastic bottles; they took them away.
In Bali, I’m confronted with what happens when plastic consumption is left unchecked. In Santa Barbara, we can prevent what has happened here. We can call for manageable plastic bans in our community as Goleta has done at its farmer’s market. Let’s not wait until we can see it on our beaches and in our streams; let’s stop the flow now. Let’s ditch plastic Santa Barbara.
Three simple ways to start ditching plastic.
• Bring your own bag . . . everywhere.
• Store and transport food in reusable containers.
• Buy boxed products instead of bottled.