For
the last few years I flagged the New Year’s resolutions, I mean who really
keeps them anyway ?
But
this year something changed….the world is in shock and awe over the inauguration
of an unlikely President (you know who I’m talking about, so let’s just leave
that right there). By this point I’d had
enough of the theatrics, ‘this shit can’t be real’ I thought, time to refocus
my energy into tangible action and pull myself away from the drama. And that’s
when I decided, albeit a little late in the year, that the only resolutions
I needed for 2017 were to love more and to do more. Yeah yeah pretty vague I know, doesn’t fit
the SMART goals framework, but it’ll do!
So
in the spirit of ‘doing more’ I set out to tackle a bugbear of mine since the
very first time I visited Japan (over 20 years ago), the ridiculously excessive and wasteful use of
single-use plastic.
For
a country that prides itself on not being wasteful, the often boasted concept of ‘mottainai’,
there is a staggering amount of thoughtless waste going on. From the
individually wrapped confections, the wrapping of fresh fruit and vege, or the
Japanese love of the poly bag, (if it’s naked, cold or hot, it must have a poly
bag) plastic is EVERYWHERE you turn.
I
found myself starting to fall into the zombie like state of plastic acceptance,
and when you snap out of it you are startlingly aware of the plastic society we
now live in. Don’t get me wrong, plastic is extremely useful and versatile, but
we need to value it more and use it responsibly, we are literally suffocating in the stuff!
I’ve
started this blog to record my personal journey out of the plastic fog. ‘Pura’
is the Japanese word for plastic and the name is a bit of a play with words. It
reflects the standard response I often get of shock and disbelief at not
wanting a plastic bag, as if I was doing something deemed uncouth or socially
unacceptable. The title is also reflective of my own shock when finding the
rare item not wrapped in plastic, and discovering how easy giving up single-use
plastic has been for the most part.
The
sooner we can get back to living more simply (before it’s forced upon us) the
better things will be for us and the planet.
Stay
tuned for my upcoming posts where I’ll be breaking down my plastic-free
month which I undertook in February 2017. I'll go into details of the unexpected challenges, as well as some surprising benefits, of avoiding single-use plastic.
Looking forward to your stories!
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