Few things in life terrify me as much as plastic. It’s a material that popped up just a few decades ago, and now it’s everywhere. Almost everything in our lives is made out of plastic, and so much of that plastic is meant to just be thrown away. As we consume more stuff, we consume more plastic. And even if you recycle it, that’s not fixing the problem. So much of our plastic isn’t recyclable; either because it’s a hard to recycle grade of plastic or because we can’t rinse peanut butter out of our damn peanut butter jars. Today, there’s more plastic in the ocean than there are fish. As fish and other animals eat plastic, they either choke or contaminate themselves with toxics. The entire marine food web is full of plastic.

This stuff literally keeps me up at night. I’m thinking about this as I’m typing this blog post on my plastic key board (which one day will be derelict and awash in the ocean to be eaten by some poor whale). My friend Chrissy also has this plastic guilt. And despite our best efforts to make lifestyle changes to use more reusable items, we’re still surrounded by plastic! At times, overcoming this issue feels daunting. We didn’t come to any major solutions to deal with this problem, but together, we drowned our sorrows about drowning in plastic. Cheers!