Secondhand clothes, a six-month potty, and reusable wraps: advice from an expert on the fight against plastic.

LondonNever buying bottled water in plastic, always opting for secondhand clothes, wooden toys (or reused ones if they're plastic), or putting babies on the potty from six weeks old (yes, six weeks) are some of the many ways to start freeing yourself, little by little, from the "dependence" on plastic. In fact, it's probably another way of life.

The journalist from The Wall Street Journal Consumer specialist Saabira Chaudhuri says she's not a radical leftist, and that "it's not about banning plastic." But some of her advice—the urinal, for example—for combating the harm caused by these ubiquitous petroleum products, to which "we are addicted," may sound maximalist. Is it?

It's a classic image that defines an era. In the first minutes of the film The graduate, a relatively young Dustin Hoffman (Ben) receives some well-intentioned advice from a friend of his parents, Mr. McGuire. From that scene on, the plastics business is no longer a splendid one. Or maybe it is, but it's seen in a much worse light. Adventure, from from some of the most recent scientific studies, Saabira Chaudhuri, who has barely published the book in English Consumed: How big brands got us hooked on plastic (Consumed. How big brands got us hooked on plastic.

His thesis is relatively simple. "In the beginning, it was humans who shaped plastic. Now, it's plastic that shapes us," he tells ARA in a conversation held in London. The example of diapers is paradigmatic. "Our children wear disposable ones for much longer than we do." And when we say diapers, we mean disposable water bottles, from the insatiable hunger for snacks, from a cup of coffee to sip while walking down the street or from compulsive clothing purchases and a sandwich wrapped in plastic. "The relationship we have is as unhealthy as it is dependent. I'm not against plastic in general. It has many benefits for many industries: from aviation to medicine. But single-use plastics, the ones we use without thinking, simply because they're so cheap and because that's how they reach us, we should reject." The author defends activism and protests against the companies that promote them. A necessary task. "Five, ten, fifty customers can do a lot to change a policy with a message on social media or a letter to the CEO."

Very little recycling

Between 400 and 430 million tons of plastic are produced worldwide each year, and nearly half of it is used for disposable products. And more than 90% of this plastic is never recycled in the United States, according to the specialist in the Wall Street JournalAt most, only 30% of single-use bottles are recycled. Where does the rest end up? In landfills, in the oceans, in rivers, in a baby's lungs. Literally. And why isn't more recycled? "Because producing new plastic from petroleum is much cheaper than recycling it. More regulations are needed."

But in addition, as Saabira Chaudhuri explains in her book, there are technical reasons in addition to the commercial and economic ones. Colored bottles are practically doomed to not be recycled, "and that, as consumers, we should know." Why? A red, purple, green, or any other color bottle can only have a second life by becoming gray or black plastic, because the color cannot be removed, and it's too expensive to sort all the bottles of a specific color to treat them in a certain way and make more. Therefore, when one of these bottles arrives at a recycling center, it goes into a large pile that becomes gray plastic, to be used for pipes, roofing, or construction materials. Never for a new shampoo bottle or for making food packaging, which are almost always made from new plastic. "We must produce less plastic."

Before her, in 2011, journalist and writer Susan Freinkel wrote another canonical text on the subject: Plastic. In toxic love story. One of Saabira Chaudhuri's contributions also focuses on how the big brands that we all have in mind – McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Unilever – and other large consumer goods manufacturers have taken advantage of single-use plastics to boost their profits, having invested billions of dollars to convince consumers. bags, bottles, shampoo in sachets and ultra-processed foods wrapped in plastic.

It all started with an article she published in 2018 in the Wall Street Journal about bottled water. This industry was beginning to see sales in the United States slow down a bit. Saabira Chaudhuri tried to find out what was going on and to do so, she looked at Nestlé, which has a large business in that product. Going back in time, she concluded that "without the plastic bottle, bottled water would still be a very niche, high-end product, found only in fancy restaurants."

But are some of Saabira Chaudhuri's proposals realistic? Is it imaginable to believe in the existence of universal transparent packaging without bright, flashy colors? It doesn't seem so, because brand packaging is part of marketing, "which is how they sell the product to us." Is it imaginable to believe that all companies that make takeout coffee Will they use a single type of unpigmented cup so that it's much easier to recycle, and so that there are places in cities where they can be deposited so that they don't end up in just any old trash can or on the ground? "As for plastic packaging," says the journalist, "it seems that we are at the same point where the tobacco industry was in the 1940s and 1950s, before the link between smoking and cancer was officially recognized. We are not there yet, because plastics are ubiquitous: people use us. But I hope they use it. It's: Do I want my children and grandchildren to be exposed to all this?" No, says Chaudhuri. Ultimately, she proposes a revolution that begins with oneself. "I am not one of those people who says: 'Don't buy,' but: 'Think before you buy.'"