Get Used to the Smell

Not particularly plastic related, but nonetheless environmental in nature... this post is in regards to the East Orange County Landfill located about 5 miles from the Avalon Park area on Young Pine Road between the 417 and Innovation Way. Incidentally, this is also less than 12 miles from my lovely upscale neighborhood.

What's the stink about? Well, for the past 6 months or so, the landfill has been producing a greatly increased... stink. And folks in the nice neighborhoods that for years could not smell the landfill are raising... a stink. Okay, enough, sorry.

I googled around for a little while and couldn't figure out how long the landfill has been there, but I did find a reference to it dating back to 1998. I've lived in my house since 2005 and the Lake Nona area since 2004. As a point of fact, before moving here, we lived about 4 miles away from the landfill.

Never smelled it. Never even really knew it was there.



So what has changed? According to this article,

"In April 2013, the county began burying construction and demolition debris along with household waste at the landfill, a combination that has produced higher concentrations of hydrogen sulfide, a colorless gas with an odor of rotten eggs. The two waste streams had previously been kept separate at the dump."

This change has been rather unfortunate and has resulted in numerous town hall style meetings and news reports on the local TV stations.



People all over the eastern Orange county area are up in arms. You really can smell this and the air even by my house is barely breathable at times, particularly at dawn and in the evening. I can only imagine how bad it is within 5 miles of the place.

The purpose of this post, however, is not to complain about the landfill. No, that ship has sailed. Approximately 2900 tons of waste is dumped in the landfill daily, and this is just one of many thousands of landfills across the country, and the world. Unless we make major changes to the way we deal with our waste, you can expect the whole planet to smell this way in a matter of decades. After all, the first landfill ever built was in Fresno, California in 1937. Not even 100 years ago! There are nearly 3100 active landfills in the US right now and over 10,000 old landfills that are no longer in use.

Many studies show that the effects of the fumes from landfills can be dangerous to humans and wildlife. If you want to read about that, just google it - there is so much out there to find. But that's not the point of this blog either.

My point is this: get used to the smell, people. Breathe it in and desensitize yourself to the stench. In less than 100 years, we have put 13,100 landfills that smell like this in place in our country. Given our population growth, that number will more than double in the next 100 years. And you don't need to be a mathematician to know that eventually - in the not-too-distant future - landfills will cover the entire planet.

Zion, here we come.

So roll down your windows, and take a deep breath. Close your eyes and let the stench permeate your sense. You might as well. This is the smell of the future... unless. Unless what? I don't know, but in my moments of hope, few though they may be, I have to believe the someone - maybe someone who is currently a child - will figure it all out in my lifetime.

We Don't Travel Light

One of the easiest ways to avoid single-use plastics and styrofoam is to carry utensils, containers, etc. wherever you go.

Here is what I'm packing in my purse right now, all conveniently stored inside this cute Vera Bradley makeup bag.

In case you can't tell from my artistic (cough cough) photo, there a stainless steel straw, knife, fork, spoon, and eight paper straws. The stainless straw is for me, while the kids get the paper straws. It's that that I don't love them enough to bring along steel straws for them - to the contrary, I love their teeth enough to make sure that should the urge strike one of the kids to jump up and run around with his or her drink, the teeth don't suffer for the experience.

This pack has come in handy on several occasions, and I honestly can't understand why I haven't carried something like this around for years.

Then, I've packed bags in both cars that contain a variety of tupperware (used in the collective, not name-brand, sense) and reusable cups. When we go to a restaurant, we bring in the bag and then we don't walk out with styrofoam. Here is what came home last night from a post-football-game trip to Perkins:

Not all containers were used to take home leftovers, but I bring the whole caboodle into the house so that I can replace the containers currently holding food and return the kit back to the car.

Is this a hassle? I suppose it could be for some. For us, now that we know what happens to the styrofoam once it reaches the landfill, we are good with the extra steps and it's not that big a deal.

Pushing on... we are trying biodegradable garbage bags. I'll report on those soon.

It's in the Bags

This is going to seem very basic, but I would be remiss to not discuss the reusable bag situation.

Almost everyone I know shows up at Publix - at almost any store, really - with a bag full of reusable bags. We are all very good about this, to the point that when we forget our bags at home that one little time, because maybe we were running late or had a million things on our minds, we apologize to the high school or college student bagging our groceries with a mumbled, "I always bring my bags, I promise I'll bring these back and recycle them," and then we don't forget again, at least for a while.

This is a good thing. We've come a long way, after sliding a long way.

I can remember the days of paper bags in the grocery store, in the 1970s. My mom would unpack the groceries and then use the paper bag for the kitchen garbage can. When we put out our big trash cans for the garbage collectors, they would be full of brown bags full of mostly decomposable things - food scraps, boxes, and paper wrappers. We didn't waste things back then - at least, not as much.  

Then the 80s came, and suddenly there were plastic bags. I don't remember when they first appeared at the grocery store, but I remember that fresh-out-of-high-school job at Caldor (the everyday discount store) and bagging everything in plastic, unless someone asked for paper - which was rare, but it did happen. Sometimes we used the bags a second time, and sometimes we didn't. We just didn't worry about it.

About five years ago, I was shopping at Publix, and some large canvas bags were hanging off the register, for sale. I thought this was cool, and then I thought about why I'd want one - because after all, bags are my "thing". When it dawned on me that the canvas bags would replace the plastic, I bought five at once.

Over the years, we've amassed quite a few bags, to the point where we have sets in both cars. The newer bags are not as nice - they are not totally canvas and I'm pretty sure they are made of nylon or some other threaded plastic. 

But at least they are reusable, for quite some time. I've ripped a bunch and thrown them out, but those five original bags I still have, even though some are stained and worn.

A few months ago, Sheridan and I were standing in the produce department at our favorite Publix, marveling at the fact that even though we've all cut the use of plastic shopping bags, we were still watching produce bags being torn and filled by the half dozen. And so we thought, there must be a better option.

Searching under "reusable produce bags" on Amazon led to this gorgeous find:

So I bought a 6-pack, in different sizes, and we have been using them ever since. The cashiers typically marvel at them - "That's so cool! Where did you find it?" - so this is not a common occurrence for them, but I like to think that when the first reusable shopping bags appeared on the scene, the reaction was similar. In time, hopefully those plastic produce bags will disappear from common use as well.

The beauty of these bags, which makes them even nicer than the shopping bags, is that you can throw them in the wash and they come out as good as new.

Eradicating produce bags is low hanging fruit - pun intended. All it takes is a little thought before walking out the door and if you can't handle it, then just stow them in the vehicles. Easy? You betcha.

Embarking on our journey to plastic-free living

Eliminating plastic from our lives is going to be really difficult, but our family has committed to doing this for a variety of reasons.

About two months ago, I watched Plastic Paradise, a documentary available on Netflix. And then I watched it again. The moral of this story is that I was quite disturbed. Not just by the terrible ways that plastic is literally destroying our environment - although that is also disturbing but not exactly news if you just go to the beach or the park or any populated natural area and look around you. But also by the way plastic is becoming part of our very fabric of life. It's in our blood, our cells, and our water supply. It's in our food chain at very high levels. And being as plastic was developed for home use in the 1950's, it has only been around about 70 years. If we can do this much damage to ourselves and the environment in only 70 years, what does that say about the future of our planet and our species?

My 10 year old daughter Sheridan was working on a project for Maker Faire in Orlando. She had a lot of ideas but she chose to work on a biodegradable, non-toxic plastic substitute. Of course this filled me with pride, but I knew she had her work cut out for her. A little short of essential chemistry skills and materials science education, she watched Plastic Paradise herself, did a little googling, and came up with a recipe for making casine (out of milk and vinegar) in my kitchen. By cooking, removing the liquid, and curing the substance, you get something that feels very much like plastic but is, in reality, more closely related to cheese.

Her table at Maker Faire was a hit and she had non-stop traffic all day. 90% of the visitors were very impressed and quite complimentary. Some parents were quick to tell me how proud I should be (and I am). Others walked away, lecturing their own kids on their lack of initiative to save the planet. But a few folks asked her some very hard questions. And now she knows she has her work cut out for her in the future, because she wants to pursue this as a career and lifestyle.

Of course, she's 10, so she may change her mind and decide next week that she's going to be a race car driver when she grows up. That's okay with me as long as she's driving an electric race car.

Over the coming weeks, we are going to gradually eradicate plastic from our home and our lives outside of it. This is going to be easy at first and we've already made some basic changes. At some point, it's going to become challenging. We will be depending heavily on Amazon to provide us with a lot of our replacement products, as we do not live close to a Whole Foods or similar healthy living store and with two full time jobs and three active kids, we are just out of time for driving 40 minutes away to get biodegradable garbage bags. But thankfully we live in a day and age where this is not necessary and we can simply let our fingers do the shopping.

Our first step is to tackle plastic straws. These tiny sticks of evil always always always end up in landfills where they will stay for who knows how long. 500 years or more, we believe. In addition to buying a box of stainless steel straws for home use, I am now carrying around a pouch of these.

They cost about $9 on Amazon and I'll report back later on how long they lasted. These straws are very sturdy and the kids love them. In fact, I think I'll go through them quickly simply because everyone around us wants one when I pull them out of my bag. That's okay - spreading the message is part of the mission.

We have also pledged to avoid the plastic covers on cups that we get at fast-food places and to either request paper cups (where available) or bring our own cups. I already bring my own reusable mug everywhere I go, but I've stashed a few extras in the Macon-mobiles so that we don't have to think of this every time we leave the house.

I'd like to post in this blog more than once a week, but I doubt I'll be able to simply because a) my job and life are very demanding and b) I already have another blog that I post in a couple of times a week about my first sustainability-lifestyle love, my Chevy Volt. I'm very committed to moving towards zero emission driving as well. But every week, expect to see a new Macon-innovation geared towards plastic eradication, and these will get progressively complex as time goes on.

Feel free to share ideas in the comments too. No ego here - in order to make this work on a large scale, we all need to be thinking and working together.