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ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS ) — A Montford couple who pledged to go plastic-free in January plan to continue their drastic lifestyle change to help raise awareness and empower others.
“We did start it as a one-month challenge,” says Hilary Drake. “It’s gone really quickly. It’s felt really empowering and exciting, and there’s really no turning back.”
She and wife Emma are determined to avoid what seems like the unavoidable. They document the effort on their “Mind Your Plastic” website.
“We feel really excited about what we are doing. We have all this energy to write about it and share the story,” Hilary said.
By the numbers, our reliance on plastic is mind-boggling. The average American throws out 185 pounds of it every year, and a stunning 91 percent isn’t recycled.
Each year, 300 million tons of plastic is used only once.
“I was just looking around thinking, wow, like 98 percent of what I could buy here has some plastic packaging on it,” Hilary observed.
It turns out a family that cooks together also learns together.
“Did you get some garlic?” Emma asked, coaching kids Inga and Julian as they made hummus. “I think more salt, Julian.”
More quality time while cooking items they’d normally buy pre-packaged is a central part of the experiment.
“We’re definitely having more family time in the kitchen,” Hilary says.
Homemade hummus is the by-product of the ambitious idea to stop using single-use plastic.
“Just a huge mindfulness shift to where we are seeing all the ways that we before mindlessly consumed plastic,” Hilary said. “It’s definitely harder in terms of planning, but once you get the rhythm and once you figure out the top 10 ways to cut your plastic, you can implement that pretty easily.”
“This is an earth concern and a health concern and why am I participating in it?” Emma added.
Cutting the cord isn’t easy because plastic is kind of in Hilary’s DNA.
In 1907, her great-great-grandfather Leo Baekeland created the first fully synthetic polymer and named it Bakelite. The first form of plastic was used in everything from phones to furniture.
“He felt there was a kind of limitless potential for this material,” she says. “That has been a motivating force to kind of be on the other side of the story.”
Reusable shopping bags are an easy way to start.
They also recommend cloth produce bags with a tare weight tag, so you aren’t charged for the weight of the bag at the store.
“That weight gets subtracted from the weight of whatever you’re buying,” Hilary explained.
They have lunch kits with a stainless steel insert for the children.
The family buys more from the bulk foods section of the market and bring their own glass jars so they don’t need plastic containers.
“So you can skip the gym that day when you’re carting all your jars to and fro,” Hilary said, showing us her drawer full of jars.
The Drakes say cooking more of the packaged foods they used to buy translates into less plastic use while saving them hundreds of dollars each month.
So, that means preparing more snacks like peanut butter balls, which are full of healthy ingredients.
“We realized that we needed to make our own hummus,” Hilary says. “We’re vegetarian, make our own almond milk, make our own yogurt.”
They initially worried about how their kids would take the change.
“When you explain to children why plastic is a bad thing on earth, they really step up and say, ‘Oh, my goodness, I totally understand that. Why are we using it?'” Emma says.
Despite her great-great-grandfather’s legacy, Hilary believes he’d understand her plastic-free push.
“I would hope he would approve. You know, we have to change with the times,” she said.
For the Drakes, it’s been eye-opening to see just how ubiquitous plastic is.
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