Cheryl Lohrman victorious after finding a specialty deli that would sell her cheese and put it, plastic free, in her steel tin. (Photo courtesy of Sadie Babits)
We use a lot of plastic. Every year some 30 million tons of plastic in the U.S. from diapers to bottles get tossed in landfills. One woman wants to change those numbers. She’s trying to live her life without plastic. Sadie Babits caught up with her to find out if that’s really possible.
Transcript
We use a lot of plastic. Every year some 30 million tons of plastic in the U.S. from diapers to bottles get tossed in landfills. One woman wants to change those numbers. She’s trying to live her life without plastic. Sadie Babits caught up with her to find out if that’s really possible.
When Cheryl Lohrmann comes to the grocery store all she sees is plastic. Plastic yogurt containers, cheese wrapped in plastic shrink-wrap, juice bottles, plastic bags. She doesn’t want this stuff in her life. So Lohrmann decided she’d vote with her wallet by refusing to buy anything with plastic.
“We’re at cherry sprouts grocery store in Portland, OR where I’m going to purchase some cheese and some eggs.”
Eggs are no problem. She just puts them in her used egg carton. But cheese is a different story. She has a small steel tin that looks like it belongs with her camping gear – not the grocery store. And Lohrmann has a special request for the guy behind the counter.
“And that is if I get the cheese not wrapped up in plastic but just in this container or maybe you could put this on paper.”
“Aahhh. I don’t think we can do that because it needs to be wrapped up.”
Lohrmann gets that reaction a lot. So she won’t buy cheese here. It means a trip to another shop – this time a high-end specialty deli.
LouAnne Schooler owns this store. She explains to Lohrmann why they use plastic.
“Plastic, it’s the unfortunately simplest choice because we wrap and re-wrap continuously throughout the day and it can’t be left unwrapped and people need to see the cheese so that precludes it from being wrapped in most papers.”
But Schooler says she’s only too happy to help people like Lohrmann who don’t want their cheese shrink- wraped. So she drops the cheese –plastic free – into Lohrmann’s tin.
“That’s a good chunk of cheese. Magical moment here–thanks for letting me do that”
“Sure.”
Lohrmann started going plastic free a couple of years ago after reading Elizabeth Royte’s book Garbageland. The author tracked her trash to find out where it ended up. The chapter on plastic struck a nerve with Lohrmann.
“I think it’s been taken too far when you have toothpicks individually wrapped in plastic. You know you just start to think is that really necessary given the fact that this is such a toxic material that doesn’t have high enough recycling rights to really justify having it.”
Lohrmann also gets miffed that you end up paying for plastic three times. You pay for it at the grocery store and again to have it hauled to the landfill. Finally, she says we pay for it environmentally – plastic doesn’t disappear. So you might think it’s a little nuts to even think about living a life free of plastic. Lohrmann gets that.
“It is hard right now to feel like you can maneuver to get whatever you want without plastic.”
“Ok, so on a scale of one to ten–ten being plastic free–where are you?”
“I would say probably a nine.”
That’s a nine when it comes to buying groceries. Because let’s face it. Plastic is everywhere even in Lohrmann’s home. There’s her computer, picture frames, even the parts on her bike. She realizes going plastic free is nearly impossible but she’s willing to try to send a message especially to businesses that we need to reduce the amount of plastic in our lives.
For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.
