Living Without Plastic – You Even Need to Give Up Chewing Gum

Turtle eating plastic - source http://www.seaturtle.org

The article I posted last week on living without plastic created an interesting discussion which sent me looking for more information.  Plastic has become so ubiquitous in our lives that we are often not even aware of when and where we use it.  And most of us are unaware of how it impacts both our personal health and that of our planet.  Fortunately there are a growing number of people who are concerned about this and do all that they can to help the rest of us keep abreast of where we encounter plastic.

My Plastic Free Life is a great blog that I discovered today that has a lot of information on plastics.  Some of her suggestions are obvious like giving bottled water and plastic grocery bags.  But did you know that even chewing gum contains plastic?

According to Chemistry.About.com, chewing gum was originally made from tree sap called chicle, a natural rubber, and sometimes various waxes.  But…

After World War II, chemists learned to make synthetic rubber, which came to replace most natural rubber in chewing gum (e.g., polyethylene and polyvinyl acetate). The last U.S. manufacturer to use chicle is Glee Gum.

Polyvinyl acetate? What’s that? According to the article “Behind the Label: Chewing Gum” published this week in The Ecologist, polyvinyl acetate (a type of plastic) is manufactured using vinyl acetate, a chemical shown to cause tumors in lab rats. In fact, in 2008 the Canadian government was so concerned about vinyl acetate used in the production of chewing gum that they added it to a list of substances to be considered toxic. However, according to the The Ecologist article, government regulators were forced to back down due to industry pressure.

Read the entire article

The question is of course – if it is in chewing gum where else do we ingest plastic unawares?  The answer is far more frequently than we realize and our health is suffering as a result.  Here are some very disturbing articles that spell out some of these broader concerns: Plastics the Sixth Basic Food Group Part 1 and Plastics the Sixth Basic Food Group Part 2 .  And it is not just that we ingest plastic constantly.  Our world is filling up with plastic refuse and even the seas are at risk.

A June 2006 United Nations environmental program report estimated that there are an average of 46,000 pieces of plastic debris floating on or near the surface of every square mile of ocean. Read the entire article

SO what can we do?  Cutting back on plastic usage really is one of the best things we can do for our health and for our planet.

I thought that this suggestion Take the Plastic Challenge was particularly helpful and a good place to start in educating ourselves about plastic.  I would love to hear from anyone who tries it and even more from anyone who makes major changes in their lives as a result.

TAKE THE CHALLENGE! Collect your plastic waste (both recyclable and non) for one week or more. Then photograph, tally, and post it here. What can we learn about our habits and lifestyles by examining our waste? And what changes can each of us make to leave the planet a little less trashy?