Yes, this is New York, and we are all obsessed with efficiency and convenience. We know that very few of us are willing to cook and pack a lunch every morning, and somehow at the end of a long day, the lure of the Seamless website is strong. But little acts can make a big difference in our city and our world.
Virtually every piece of plastic ever created is still somewhere on the planet in one form or another. As we will show you on this website, this is a huge environmental problem on many levels. We make ourselves feel better by recycling, but the fact of the matter is that recycling is very inefficient and expensive. More than 80% of our plastic ends up in landfills
even with aggressive recycling programs.
Putting your faith in high tech cleanup devices to remove visible plastic just isn't enough. If anything, it makes things worse by convincing consumers that there is no need to curtail our appetite for disposable items, since someone else will take care of the problem.
Nothing is more important in fighting this problem than
source reduction - simply using less plastic. And that depends on you, the consumer, making smart choices.
We hope that this site will give people resources that we need to make a difference. We plan on highlighting businesses that deliver food in as little plastic as possible, and to point out simple methods of reducing our own personal plastic consumption.
We are New Yorkers. We can do anything!