Lacy Cagle (Ecochallenge.org Staff)

With us getting ready for a baby in a couple months, having a large community of people who don't think having the newest things is a high value and who don't want to waste things has been extremely beneficial to us. We've had most of the big ticket baby items donated to us by people whose kids have outgrown them, and I don't think we'll ever have to buy clothes! :D This has saved us a ton of money and waste. We even have had two people donate reusable diapers to us! We're feeling extremely grateful and excited to pass on the love when the time comes.

I watched The Story of Plastic because earthday365 was screening it, and I'm so glad I did! The film made great connections to larger systems, including capitalism, and didn't diminish individual choices, but showed that much larger things need to change to address plastic pollution. It also focused on the whole lifecycle of plastic, not just end-of-life. I highly recommend it.

Plastic pollution is pretty bad in South City, with plastic bags and styrofoam floating around and floating into waterways through street drains. Illegal dumping is also a serious issue, especially in Ward 20, where we just moved from.

It's much more difficult to refuse/avoid plastic bags now in light of all of the adjustments to handle COVID. I went to the grocery store for the first time in 4 months yesterday - my partner has been doing our grocery store runs in the past few months. He always comes home with SO many plastic bags, but I didn't want to criticize since he was willing to do all of the grocery runs! This time, I asked that they didn't bag things for me and I would just put them in my cart. No big deal at all, and I bagged things when I got to the car. It took a little extra time and effort, but was worth it to me to not have a dozen more plastic bags that I can't recycle right now anyway!