Reduce your Plastics

Ever try to live a "plastic-free month?" Or even a "single-use plastic-free month?" Try it some time. It's darn near impossible! Plastics are used in everything from product packaging to storage containers to clothing to electronics to furniture. And it's ruining our environment and ecosystem. Plastics can now be found everywhere on earth, from the bottom of the sea to the polar ice caps to our pristine shorelines to the food we eat. Most plastics are made from fossil fuels, and the fossil fuel industry expects as much as a third of its future revenue growth to come from increased sale of plastics.

But there are ways you can reduce your own plastic use, especially single-use plastic.

• Click here to find a long list of substitution suggestions compiled by the PlasticPollutionCoalition

• (TBD) Click here to find suggestions compiled by Beth Am Dayenu members

Reduce your Fossil Fuel Consumption

There are many ways to reduce the amount of energy you use in your daily life, but you can't reduce it to zero. For the rest, the best thing you can do is use electricity instead of oil, natural gas or gasoline. Electricity's main advantage is that it can be generated in many different ways, and increasingly in ways that are sustainable, such as solar and wind generation. If you switch to electric, then you can ride the wave as these energy sources become more prevalent.

• Click here to learn about buying an Electric Vehicle

• Click here to learn how to heat and cool your home more efficiently

• Electrify! BayREN and 350 Silicon Valley have great rundowns and references about electric appliance rebates in the Bay Area

• Click here to try the Berkeley Climate Footprint calculator

Recycle

Recycling is not our way out of the crisis. Relatively few materials can be recycled, yet fewer can be recycled more than once, and even fewer actually make it to a recycling facility that can actually process it. As has been said, the cleanest, safest, most environmentally sustainable unit of material or energy is the one that doesn't get produced at all.

That said, if you have stuff to recycle, you should. Here are some resources that can help.

• Terracycle can recycle many items that our municipal services can't, such as PPE (like gloves and masks)

• Online Guide for Reuse, Repair, Recycling, and Safe Disposal of almost anything
  (serving Alameda County, Contra Costa County, and the City of Palo Alto)

• . . .

Our Local Businesses

It's one thing to decide to use less packaging at the grocery store, but what if your store only sells products wrapped in plastic? What if none of the stores in your area sell products without plastic? Or, let's say you want to buy apple juice in glass jars (which are much more recyclable than plastic), but stores sell it only in plastic bottles. By acting together, we can encourage our local businesses to make more sustainable choices.

• Click here to petition XXX company to do ZZZ

• Click here to write to YYY

• (Concrete actions to come...)

Our Financial Institutions

One of Dayenu's primary efforts is to get the funding out of fossil fuels.

• (Concrete actions to come...)

Plastics

• This article in The Atlantic describes the history of plastic, and explains how plastic is a key contributor to climate change

"Too often plastics’ proliferation can seem of secondary importance as climate disasters accelerate. But plastics and climate aren’t separate issues. They are structurally linked problems, and also mutually compounding, with plastics’ facilities spewing climate-relevant emissions and extreme weather further dispersing plastic into the environment."

"Should U.S. plastics production continue to grow as the industry projects, by 2030, it will eclipse the climate contributions of coal-fired power plants."

• This detailed report answers the same question in excruciating detail

Greenhouse Gases

• The California Air Resources Board has an elaborate Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventory, showing in great detail where greenhouse emissions are coming from. Also see it graphically on this page.