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Erin Victor is a doctoral candidate at the University of Maine. This column reflects her views and expertise and does not speak on behalf of the university. She is a member of the Maine chapter of the national Scholars Strategy Network, which brings together scholars across the country to address public challenges and their policy implications. Members’ columns appear in the BDN every other week.
Waving his homemade wand, my 3-year-old son shouts excitedly, “Magical, magical, turn mommy into a pterodactyl!”
Poof!
I play along, flapping my arms and letting out my best impersonation of a pterodactyl call.
I wonder if I could borrow this magical wand. There are a few things I’d like to fix around here, like the overwhelming use of single-use plastics at my children’s schools. At school events they hand out miniature plastic water bottles, ignoring the working drinking fountain across the hall. At lunchtime, fruits are wrapped in plastic and kids eat with disposable cutlery. This is problematic given recent scientific studies exposing the health implications of endocrine disrupting chemicals that leak from plastic packaging, and because it signals to our kids that disposability is normal. With National Reuse Day approaching on Oct. 20, I wonder how we can start to normalize reuse systems instead.
As a doctoral candidate in the anthropology and environmental policy program at the University of Maine, I am currently deep in “research mode.” I am attending conferences, interviewing experts, and administering surveys focused on policy solutions to address plastic waste and pollution. I am either talking about, reading about, or thinking about trash and recycling day-in and day-out. With the average American generating a mind boggling 4.9 pounds of waste per day, the urgent need for better solutions to our waste crisis is top of mind when I pick up my kids from school.
However, some of the solutions the petrochemical and packaging industry are pushing are concerning. With the promise to recycle even “hard-to-recycle” plastics, the industry is advocating for “advanced recycling” — a suite of technologies that use heat and/or chemicals to break down plastics back into their molecular form. Opponents call these “false solutions,” pointing out that these facilities have yet to operate at scale, require significant energy inputs, generate hazardous air pollution and waste by-products, and are disproportionately located in low-income communities and communities of color.
As more people become aware of the failures of the recycling system, ”there’s a tendency for the industry to think they need to innovate some solution,” explains Graham Hamilton from the Break Free From Plastic movement. He argues, “We don’t need to innovate a new solution, we need to look back at historical ways of consuming and figuring out how those systems can be scaled regionally, nationally, and globally.”
There are probably better paths forward than waiting for AI and robotics to turn plastic into gold. As Karen Wirsig with Environmental Defense told CBC reporters, “we can’t simply pin all our hopes on some magical waste management technology that is totally unproven, expensive and polluting.” We must look at ways to reduce unnecessary single-use items and make reusing, repairing, and sharing the norm.
Putting my son’s wand aside, I look towards the groups in Maine that are already doing great work to advance policy solutions and secure investments to scale reuse systems throughout the state, such as the Natural Resources Council of Maine and Reuse Maine. Sharing UPSTREAM Solution’s Conscious Cafeteria Report with the PTO at my kid’s school, I hope the impressive environmental and economic savings realized by 15 elementary schools that switched to stainless steel trays in their cafeterias will inspire our school to shift towards reuse.
Another great option is to contact Reuse Maine and request stickers as part of the BYO project encouraging local cafes and restaurants to signal that they “not only accept, but welcome reusable containers.” These may seem like small actions, but collectively they can pave the way for normalizing reuse in our communities. No magic wand required.
