Week 46 & 47: Pee cups, parties & cherry lime rickies

**Please skip this post if you have a weak stomach or have any uncompromising preconceived notions of me as a well-mannered lady .**

Nothing says "welcome home" like a virus bent on making a human stick, double-wick of dynamite out of me for 39.5 hours. It was my first week back at work and I almost made it until the clock struck midnight on Friday morning. And it was not the Grim Reaper who came knocking, but rather just his more sociable personal assistant. I think her name was Tina. She kicked me out of bed with a start at 12:49 am on Friday morning and we proceeded to engage in the longest meeting of my life. My love for life was tested a total of 57 times, each time begging for mercy at the foot of the plastic toilet throne. Cleaning up your own effluent off the bathroom floor causes one to reflect in a deeper way about life and purging the excess from it.

After much much thought and dehydration, I adjourned my meeting with Tina on Saturday afternoon and made my way to the hospital, just one of the many plastic hot spots in the world.

I was checked in by a nurse with the bedside manner of a geriatric schnauzer. I received my first plastic paraphernalia--the bracelet. I was given a "dump" bucket just in case the heavens opened while I was in the waiting room. Thankfully, I was called in quickly and wearily followed the nurse to my room where I somehow managed to get undressed and slip into the longest hospital gown ever. Got into the bed, my vitals were taken, and before I knew it, Nurse Chipperpants hooked me up with my first liter of IV fluids. I did not think to take these bags because I was concentrating more on not vomiting or crapping my pants in public. I do have priorities. I was in and out of sleep & shivering and after a visit from Dr. T, he comes to the educated conclusion that I have a virus. I have my suspicions of the source after I wrote off my coconut noodles from the night before, but all I cared about was eventually wanting to eat again and to get out of the hospital. I had to pee into a cup and I was surpised to see a "pee kit" complete with 2 individually wrapped castile soap wipes and a pee cup with cap AND handle--all contained in a sealed plastic pouch with a plastic label cuff. I was also given a plastic poop tray that fits snugly in between the toilet bowl and the seat. You poop into it and then some magic medical fairy comes to take it away. I did not do this, but the poop tray went into the trash anyway. Nothing I could do. They also served me Sprite in a styrofoam cup with a plastic straw. All of these items (sans poop tray) managed to make it home with me to become a part of my last two weeks of collection.

I drank a lot of Gatorade from plastic and ate many a plastic-wrapped Saltine. I took anti-nausea medication from a plastic pill bottle. When I was sick, I thought, "Jeez, is there any way to just get sick and heal without coming into contact with plastic?"

When you are sick, what kinds of plastics do you feel that you need in order to recover?

With plastics, where is the line between necessity and excess?

How does plastic use vary from person to person? Do men use more or less than women? Adults more or less than children? Chinese more or less than Italian? Urban more or less than rural? Wealthy more or less than poor? Are there any direct correlations between plastic use and education? IQ? culture? age?

Today, I worked at a birthday party for a 6 year old. The party was held on a $6-7 million piece of real estate in Marblehead. This party was catered and decorated with several plastic inflatable marine animals poking their heads out of shrubbery and flowers. As a marine science educator, it was a rare sight to see the elusive "garden dolphin" and "bush orca". Incredible. The driveway was lined with plastic fish balloons and catering staff walked around with the tiniest bottled waters you ever saw. Other than that, tea & lemonade was served in glass, hors d'vours served on tiny paper plates, and paint-your-own-beach-rock party favors. 3 months ago, I was at a Christening party for a local Bahamian family's baby. All drinks were served in plastic cups, food served on polystyrene plates.

Where am I going with this? I don't know.

I guess...sometimes, I find myself sitting in plastic judgement of others (especially the new McDonald's ad campaign on the trains--a photo of one of their McCafe drinks above it reads: "If you were a straw, you would be plastic. And you would be happy.") and then after I am done, I mindlessly order a cherry lime rickey in a plastic cup with lid and straw "because I deserve it."

Sigh. Awareness is a bitch sometimes, but I can't live without her anymore. I need her like a straw needs a McCafe latte.

Weeks 28-30: Leave a Trace

Two weeks ago, I had the honor of going to Jacks Bay on a community outreach with the Island School and Deep Creek Middle School students. I was asked to come along because of my interest in plastics and I jumped at the opportunity. The activity involved splitting up into groups of 2-3 and combing the beach for plastics. With their collections, the students built either something “practical” or “ornamental” in 15 minutes. Once the creations were completed, I or Professor D was hailed to document their creations through video. We then took photographs of the deconstruction of their creations. As Dr. D said, “it’s kind of like a twisted version of the Leave No Trace." Most students enjoyed taking everything apart, but a few felt a little moral twitch about throwing the trash back on the beach.

Plastigirl was my first subject. She was made from various 5-gallon bucket pieces, a shampoo bottle right arm and a soda bottle left arm, polypro rope & netting legs and a broken barrel stomach in which you could see her stomach contents. If anyone exhibits the cliché, “you are what you eat”, its Plastigirl. Her stomach was filled with more polypro rope, zip ties, a fancy shampoo bottle cap, and part of an ice cream tub.
Then came Mr. Person. Mr. was a simple man, with an F-style jug head, bottle cap eyes & nose, and a glow stick mouth…I feel a reprise of “Frosty the Snowman” coming on. Homemade funnel ears, bucket piece arms & legs, and a plastic necktie made from heaven only knows what.
The next group created a game. There were 3 containers each with different diameter openings and the object was to get various plastic scraps into the containers, with the smaller bottle openings earning more points than the larger ones.

And then there was the waterfall made from 2 broken pieces of the same lawn chair delicately balanced on the bottom half of an olive oil jug. Minimalist, balanced, thoughtful, and oh-so-versatile (they informed me that you didn’t have to send water down the fall…you could send sand, marbles, ducklings, or whatever gravity would allow). It also travels well.

I then journeyed down the beach to Plasti-city. This city didn’t have much, but it had the essentials: a baseball field and a place to wash your hair. As you can see from the photo, there was plenty of netting to catch fly balls.

Another group created a plastic dog and put it in a cage (because it was being a bad dog). I didn’t have the heart to tell them that wiener dogs don’t always make the best pets.
Anyway, when Dr. D asked them to deconstruct their creation, the students were a bit hesitant. “You mean, you want us to put everything BACK on the beach and in the bushes? Shouldn’t we have a trash can for all of it?” “Nope,” said Dr. D, “I want you to leave everything exactly as you found it.”

So, it got me thinking about deconstruction and the book Cradle to Cradle by Bill McDonough & Michael Braungart. How do we take from the earth with the intention of returning it back in the same shape & form we found it? Why is it taking us so long to turn this shipwreck of a mentality around?

In my dream vacation, I am walking along a beautifully polluted beach with the CEO’s of Sysco, Mattel, Solo, American Plastics, McDonald’s, and all the others. We have a few drinks and we talk about the cradle to grave mentality that has lead to the state of this beach. We talk about this beach and all others that are the proverbial backside of industrial processes. We start out using limited materials from the earth, tinker them into the unnatural, tout their value to the masses, convince ourselves that we cannot possibly survive without Barbie knee pads, then proceed to convince ourselves that we cannot possibly live WITH the Barbie knee pads, dispose of them through a number of ways, and boom…Malibu Beach Barbie. And the earth knows nothing about how to digest Barbie knee pads. So, we talk about how to make our stuff digestible for the earth since these CEO’s & their companies will eventually be responsible for their product when the customer is “done” with it. I know…it’s kind of an intense dream vacation, but we must be dreaming if we think our stuff just disappears into the earth. And there is no vacation from our waste stream.

Can we start tracing our stuff back to its rightful owners; these companies that use their own version of Leave No Trace? Is there a trace of responsibility, ownership, or forethought into the final resting place of their processes or product?