The Beginning of our Journey
Hello and welcome to Less Plastic Please! We’re glad to have you here.
We’re Haley and Tim and together we’re trying to reduce the amount of plastic in our life. We’re embarking on a journey so that we can share what we’re learning and hopefully create excitement around the idea of going plastic free. Without further adieu here’s a look at why we want to do this and what you can expect from our content.
First and foremost, why do we want less plastic in our lives? The answer is simple, to improve our health. We’ve wanted to get started on this for some time but weren’t jumping into action. When push came to shove we found it easier to wax poetic about a life tucked away on a farm somewhere where we would only drink from glass, and eat home grown foods. I don’t fault us for getting side tracked by this fantasy; because when you actually start trying to reduce your exposure to plastic you realize… it’s everywhere.
The realization that plastic touches every facet of our lives is discouraging. Knowing that plastic is near inescapable means that in order to get away from it a meaningful shift in lifestyle is required.
As a first step we started reading about plastics, and observing where we were seeing plastic in our day to day lives. Unsurprisingly we saw it at every turn throughout our days. We were coming in contact with plastic in our coffee, the condiments in our fridge, and even woven into our clothes.
So what got us motivated to actually get started? There was a crystallizing moment in a hot car one fateful summer afternoon.
We had been at the beach for a few hours when we returned to our car to go home. I (Haley) had settled into the passenger seat and whipped out my phone. I opened Instagram and started scrolling. In what ended up being a very serendipitous moment I also reached for a plastic bottle of water that had been baking in the car. I was taking a sip of the water when I came across an article that explained how much microplastic we ingest when drinking from a plastic bottle. Be prepared to have your mind blown.. it’s almost a quarter million pieces of microplastic (link). I put the bottle down immediately.
Simply put our jaws were on the floor. We had known that drinking from a plastic bottle was “bad” but that number really caught our attention. And then BAM like a perfect one two punch as I scrolled away from the terrifying article I was immediately confronted with a new one. Sitting just one swipe away was a post on how researchers and beginning to link a rise in colorectal cancer with exposure to micro plastics (link).
This was a crystallizing moment where it became clear our health was in jeopardy. So we talked the rest of the ride home about how we can start avoiding plastic - for real this time.
Out of that conversation this blog was born! We want to share resources, plastic free product swaps, and our journey. Our goal is not to be perfect but to lower our exposure to plastics and strive to live a healthier life while sharing what we find. We’d love If you would come along for the ride.
We’re excited to see where this takes us and say “less plastic please” together!
Cheers,
Haley & Tim
