Luke Richmond

Well, I can't think of any other free way to share plastic free July with all my friends at once! What a silly question!

Although I live a fairly spartan lifestyle, I have to admit I have problems with this one from an economic perspective, and from a communicative one. If our goal is to persuade people to only spend their money on health and safety, they'll think we're asking them to live boring lives and not have any fun, and many people will consider us fanatics who are best ignored.  Rather, we ought to encourage people to consider less consumptive, less waste producing ways to spend.  Go out and do things, spend or don't spend as you will, but focus on spending in ways that produce less waste. I fear this goal is so extreme as to alienate many people.  I'd rather see a million people wasting less, than a thousand wasting nothing. A near-zero waste lifestyle may be achievable for a select few, but it isn't a goal we're going to achieve in large populations of people, at least not yet.

Picking up trash gives me a much clearer idea of what's happening in the different places I've done it.  What kinds of things produce litter, what places are most prone to it, etc.  There's a school by my house for instance that has one sidewalk just littered with plastic waste, while the others around it are comparatively free of it.  My neighborhood has a littering blind spot!

I thought I was doing pretty well in reducing my plastic use, but I've learned there's much more I can do!  There are a lot of products I think some of us are just blind to, or unaware the other options are even available. Toothpaste tubes were one of my blind spots, for example.  It never even occurred to me that there were other options until recently.

Surprisingly easy to do if you bring your own produce bags!

Reusing those pickle jars! Victory!