The blog formerly known as   Fake Plastic Fish

Monthly Archives: May 2013

May 27, 2013

From the Waste Up – A Movie About Learning to Live Plastic-Free

Among all the depressing environmental films out there, wouldn’t it be great if there were a funny, entertaining one about what it’s actually like to try and live without plastic?  Taina Uitto, who has blogged at Plastic Manners since 2010 about her own plastic-free experiment, has been filming her process since day one.  And last year, she invited 6 Vancouver families to join her.  Now, she is putting the footage together into a feature film called From the Waste Up: Life Without Plastic, which will follow the adventures of these families as they try to navigate modern life without plastic.  (There may be a few other people that you recognize in the film!)

But the filmmakers need your support to get it finished!

Check out the trailer:

From the Waste Up – Life Without Plastic from Taina Uitto on Vimeo.

Who Is Taina?

Taina is not just a blogger and activist.  She’s also a new mom.  And yesterday, she and I had a really fun… Read the rest

May 19, 2013

The Beauty of Picking up Plastic

Dr. Marcus Eriksen of 5 Gyres, an organization dedicated to researching ocean plastic pollution, has said, “If you want to clean the gyre, clean your beach.” He meant it literally, since “if we stop adding more plastic to the ocean, in time the gyres will kick out the plastic pollution they currently hold.”  But I choose to think of the statement metaphorically.  Spending a morning cleaning plastic from a beach or river bank or roadway doesn’t just remove a fraction of plastic trash from the environment, it heightens our personal awareness of the problem and gets us in touch with the physical reality of plastic pollution — both beautiful and terrible.  We understand how vast the problem is compared to our tiny efforts at mitigation.  Sure, we might feel overwhelmed.  But hopefully, the exercise can our revitalize our commitment to reducing plastic at the source.

Yesterday Morning at Damon Slough

… Read the rest