One Woman’s Journey Towards Living Plastic-Free

How one woman is taking steps to start making the change to help our planet

Our everyday hero, Lisa Rogers, is a prominent and accomplished eating disorder therapist here in Los Angeles, so when she suggested that she write a column for insidewink on becoming plastic-free, we were surprised… but after thinking about it, it’s not surprising at all. Lisa is one of those people that is always trying to better herself, to help others and the environment.

Right now might be a good time to start this journey since we are all spending so much time at home. It could be the moment to assess our plastic use and make some changes.

We have known Lisa Rogers for years. Her son and Alison’s are best friends and the three of us have shared many beautiful times together.

Let’s meet our everyday hero, Lisa Rogers …

What inspired you to work towards plastic-free living?

Not sure I consider myself any kind of hero except that these times call on all of us to try and step up for the sake of our children’s future.

Every day we see images of floating piles of plastic in the ocean the size of Texas, photos of animals and wildlife drowning in our non-biodegradable garbage as well as articles about the all the tiny plastics we are ingesting every day, doing God knows what to our health.

I knew with a young daughter still at home and a son off at college with their whole lives ahead of them that I wanted to decrease my plastic footprint and to be an example of an active concerned environmentalist taking care of my part of the world in any small way that I can.

Was it hard to change your plastic-use habits?

I knew it wouldn’t be easy when I remembered it took me an entire year before I reliably brought my re-usable bags into the grocery store. Somehow that learning curve of routinely getting them out of the trunk and into the store and then routinely putting them back in the car after unloading my groceries was just a tad too much of a learning curve for my habituated behavior to shift.

And then, after finally buying a re-usable Starbucks cup for my daily addiction, it again took nearly another year before I got used to rinsing it out and remembering to bring it back to my car.

Making these new habits stick and the small amount of labor to stop relying on the convenience of one-use plastic is apparently quite difficult, even for someone like myself who really does care about the environment. We are all habituated to this convenience of plastic and it is tough to change.

Is it easier to do it small steps, or all at once when deciding to go plastic-free?

I’m glad that I have begun this process. I know there are people who do it in one fell swoop. They go to the “living plastic-free” websites and do a complete overhaul on their entire lives overnight and I am truly in awe, but most people don’t find it that easy. My goal is to tackle this one piece at a time – month to month. And I hope that sharing my struggles will hold me accountable and help anyone who wants to go on this journey with me.

How can our readers get involved?

Look around your home… there are so many areas to tackle. The kitchen with all the Ziplocs and packaging of food and throw away containers. There’s the bathroom with all the shampoos, conditioners, soaps and mouthwash bottles. There’s the laundry with those large plastic bottles of detergent and the cabinet under the sink full of plastic bottles of cleaning products. The list goes on forever it seems and although we put all of these one-use plastics in our recycling bins, the sad truth is that most of it goes un-recycled in overwhelmed recycling plants.

So, I would love it if the readers would go on this journey with me.. Let’s just tackle it together.
Starting next month I hope to share how I hopefully manage to replace all the various plastics in my home and the products and ideas I find to make that happen, one month at a time.

Watch for Lisa’s article next month when she gets rid of her one-time-use plastic bags!