A Day Without Plastics

Dan Poquette

ID#: 9083367248

TA: Peter Boger

Sec 310

A Day Without Plastics

Night Before

So I've decided to take on the plastics challenge and I've quickly come to the conclusion that I will in fact need to do some preparing. That is if I want to succeed in making it through an entire day without using anything plastic. First I decided to put toothpaste in a glass cup to get the morning breath out of my mouth. God I hate morning breath, especially after eating Ben and Jerry's the night before and forgetting to brush your teeth. Which of course I would never do and is most defiantly not my case.

I also poured some the milk into a glass quart jar and dumped some cereal into the box without the bag. I was determined to complete this challenge because I never lose challenges.

Thursday Morning

I woke up at 9:28 with a start. My phone was turned off because I wasn't going to use it the next day and that was what I would normally use as an alarm. I jumped out of bed and searched through a mountain of clothes at the end of my bed that kept my feet warm all night. I would have to part with my long underwear this chilly morning because they contained polyester in them and I think that comes from plastic or something. I was about to grab my laptop in order to search it on google but that had plastic in it too. So I just wore blue jeans and sweatshirt. I grabbed a wooden pencil and shoved some paper in my pocket for notes in my econ lecture. I jumped on my moped and turned it on before I realized that it was made of plastic too. Since it was 9:28 the last time I looked at a clock (which I guess would be technically cheating too) I decided just to drive to class anyway and consider whether or not I should lie about it in my blog or not on the way to class. I also realized that my shoes were also made of plastic. So I drove and cursed under my breath all the way to class. My day hadn't even been 10 min long and already it was turning out to be a bad one.

Surprisingly I made it to class by 9:35 and I hadn't missed any notes yet! I sat in my seat trying to focus on what was going and fighting to keep my eye lids open. I looked around at all the people using plastic and took note of it. There was a girl using a water bottle that I hope didn't have BPA in it. Everyone I could see was using a pen or mechanical pencil that both were made of plastic. Many people were wearing winter coats that looked like they were made out of polyester.

Soon as class ended I ran out the door as fast as I could because my moped was parked illegally and I didn't want it to get towed away again but then I remembered that I had moved someone's moped out of the way so I could park legally. Their moped was gone so I assume they drove it away and that the moped on the back of the tow truck couldn't have been the one I moved.

Thursday Afternoon

After my econ class it was time to get my workout on. I got ready, grabbed my roommate and we jumped in our SUV. Again, I decided that I should just lie about it in my blog later. I just thought it was too cold to walk to the gym. When I got to the weight room I looked around and realized that every single weight was made out of plastic. I was too “jacked” up to not workout so I worked out anyway. Again this was not helping my not using plastic score for the day. I went back to my house and made my roommate make me a protein shake in a glass cup. I went upstairs to my bed room so I wouldn't watch tv and sat down and tried to work on homework. After about an hour someone turned the stereo on and the house was shaking and people were shouting. I went downstairs and my roommates and some of my other friends were dancing around and fighting. Everyone there had a plastic cups and some people were throwing plastic balls into more plastic cups. It was a mess. This was not a place for me to be with all the unavoidable plastic everywhere (of course the next day when I looked at my phone I saw that my roommates had txted me that they were having a party).

I left the house disappointed that I could not participate in tonight's activities. So I walked all the way to my girlfriend's apartment. I had to push a plastic button to buzz myself in because I felt like throwing rocks at her window might break something and then there would be no chance that she would give me a “message” later that night.