Sandra Krautwaschl, of Graz, Austria, was astonished by the amount of plastic trash on the beaches of Croatia, where recycling is not done on the scale of her native country. She wondered what it would be like to not have all that plastic in her family's daily life.
The Krautwaschl-Rabensteiners decided to try and live a normal life without plastic, for a short period of time, to see if it could be done. Only what started as a month-long experiment eventually turned into a way of life. The first thing they did was try to eliminate all plastic objects from their home, in Eisbach. The front cover of Sandra’s book is a photo of her family surrounded by all their plastic possessions in front of their house. It says a lot about how important a role plastic has in our everyday lives. Next, they had to find alternatives, starting with wooden-handle toothbrushes, metal milk canisters, and food packaged in metal, paper or glass. They admit this radical change was difficult at first, and required ample research, but it also altered their entire shopping philosophy, in that they learned to stop and think if they really needed a product before buying it.
Read about how they did it at Oddity Central. Link -via Nag on the Lake
(Image credit: Sandra Krautwaschl)
thanks for the heads up.
I mean this in the least condescending way as possible. It is very important to try to understand something, in this case a particular article, before making a judgment about it. If you had read the article you'd have seen:
The Krautwaschl-Rabensteiners soon realized they couldn’t really live a life completely without plastic, because even the stuff made of metal and glass often has a bit of plastic in it, but they just learned to limit their use of the petroleum-made material to a minimum. They still use electronics and necessities like bike helmets, but share a car with another family, and try to buy second-hand products whenever they need something made with plastic.
“People who are as prosperous as we are can afford to think about these things, and often they can make a change,” Sandra Krautwaschl concludes. She and her family managed to reduce their plastic consumption to “almost nothing”. proving it can indeed be done.
Unless they buy food from the grower there is plastic involved somewhere. Even bulk stores have it arrive in plastic and then display it in plastic as well.
Do they own ANY communication equipment?
Weather seals around the doors and windows? Plumbing? Shoes? Vehicles? The list is endless.
They can reduce it, but I sincerely doubt the built that house, smelted the metals in it, grow every gram of food they consume (directly or indirectly) and make all their own clothes from head to toe (growing, weaving, tanning, etc).
I tried this once and it took about a month to realize that if you just go a layer deeper than the pretentious outer one that you can show and brag about you're never going to stop the production of plastic. Reduce, limit, recycle, yes, by all means. Eliminate it? Not in this century.