So, I have these two friends, Lucy and Mathilde, and they took off in mid-2018 to kayak the Inside Passage – a 2100km, three-month journey alone across Alaska to Vancouver Island, to raise money for the fight against and awareness of what they term “marine debris”.  Ahem.  What I call the disgusting mess we’ve left in our oceans, rivers and lakes by our indiscriminate use of plastic wrapping, containers, toys, gew-gaws and the general disposability of modern life.

The thing is, until I gave Lucy and Mathilde’s trip some careful thought, I hadn’t dawned on me that I should be attempting to lead a plastic-free life.  I would have been quite happy to bandy about the above italicised sentence to anyone who listened, but actually little prepared to do anything about it myself.  I’ve known about this problem for a long time – I remember seeing plastic debris all over the reefs in Egypt fifteen years ago, and looking desert landscapes that were literally filled, as far as the eye could see, with single-use plastic bags, and remember talking with people about it then and either given that “he’s mad” look or being told that yes, one turtle in 1000 might be affected by it but that it was much better to have that but also have tourists in the country bolstering the economy and seeing the beauty of the Red Sea so that it could be protected. But I never did anything about it, on a personal level.

But now I am.  This is my record of my attempts at leading a plastic-free life (plastic-reduced).

One more thing: I feel so bad that I have done nothing until now that I feel obliged to make the below statement.  I do this because I am convinced that this is the truth, and that most other people who extoll this lifestyle choice do it too softly – by saying “if you want to lead a plastic-free exisitence…”:

For me, this is not a choice.  We are given way too much choice in these matters.  It is a moral imperative for anyone who claims to care about the unique environment that keeps us alive.

 

Thank you – read on!