long time no blog!

Haven't written anything in awhile, but I've been super busy out and about in the real world. Thought I would post the reflection I wrote for our school bi-annual publication. Enjoy. :)

This March three Nichols students (Paige Dedrick ‘1i, Caroline Fenn ‘12, and Donata Lorenzo ‘11) participated in the Plastics Are Forever International Youth Summit in Long Beach, California. The symposium, sponsored by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, was attended by prominent scientists and environmentalists such as Captain Charles Moore and Ed Begley Jr.. The summit also served as a forum for the student groups to fully develop their own plans for fighting against the plastic epidemic, and to prepare to implement them in their communities. The Nichols students’ project, Plasti-Gone, aims to eliminate single-use plastics from Nichols School and schools like ours around the Great Lakes.

When I boarded the plane for Long Beach, I had a mental picture of what would comprise a “plastics symposium”. I expected to see pictures of albatrosses dead from plastic consumption and turtles mangled by plastic rings. There definitely were a few of those, but they are the very real result of our actions, and perhaps we should see those images to fully appreciate what we are fighting against, but they can be unpleasant and alienating. What I had not expected was to be greeted by a quintessential California surfer dude who had literally convinced thousands of investors to alter one small corner of the world. I had not expected to be told that being an environmental superhero should be energizing and satisfying.

“Do this work only if you can love it,” Dr. J. Nichols compelled us. It was a common theme throughout the weekend. I never imagined that people whose work is so important could so easily laugh at their own shortcomings. J. Nichols, who is easily among the most inspirational speakers I have ever heard, gave most of his speech lying down on stage, telling us horrifying nightmare-stories about his early days of public presentations. Later, when our group was called upon to present our plan to the symposium, we could relate to his recollections of heavy blushing and sweating palms. We quickly learned that the first order of business if you hope to make a positive change in the world is to conquer stage fright.

I knew by the end of the first speech that my expectations of a doom and gloom conference were the antithesis of the seminar I was attending. Instead of dispirited environmentalists, exhausted from preaching the same message, the PAF (Plastics Are Forever) summit was chock-full of plastic-related-jokes (funnier than you might imagine), found plastic collections, and optimistic, animated compatriots. No one was lecturing the 100 students about how we were ruining the planet. No one was telling us that our earth was beyond repair. I expected to leave feeling just a little more desperate and prematurely haggard. I have never been so happy to be wrong before. I left PAF feeling completely capable and enthusiastic.

Sometimes, the high school dynamic can be disadvantageous for someone interested in sustainability. Remembering that re-usable water bottle is not always easy, and recycling the one you had to buy is not always convenient; for a community of busy and academically engaged students, convenience and ease take priority. At times I have found it discouraging that only my peers and I are not always capable of accomplishing all that we should in the ‘green’ department. Nichols’ sponsorship of our attendance forced me to realize how important this work is. Sure, trigonometry and French conjugations absolutely should be mastered, but I recognized that the duty of stewardship is just as vital. I know that I express the gratitude of all three of us for this incredible opportunity to learn from the, as Caroline would put it, “important people [who] are saving the world.” We accept the implicit challenge, and we will endeavor to spread our passion throughout our student body. We were given an enormous privilege and we plan to respond with accountability.

We are responsible for our planet because we live here and because we admire it. I think that sometimes we accept arguments of ease as valid because we forget how beautiful and generous the world is. “Live like you love the world, because you do,” was just one more brilliant phrase from J. Nichols; the PAF summit reinforced our camaraderie with the earth and with each other—the message heard over and over again was that friendship and understanding is the only way to combat this plastic plague. Emphasis was justly placed on the power of each person in the room to make a vast difference with just a little personal change. Saving the world is not as massive a proposition as we allow ourselves to think, with a little commitment and a lot of love it is practically already achieved.

sea turtles & steel straws

I revamped the page, did you notice? Probably not, as I'm the only one who's read any of this stuff as of yet, but c'est pas grave. I'm happy. Way to go ShabbyBlogs for making pretty things accessible to everyone. This is going to be short and gloriously sweet because I have yet to do my french or math homework, and really blogging is on the bottom of my rational priority list.

A few things:

1. I bought stainless steel straws today. I am way beyond excited to try them out, and I will report back as soon as I know how they work. I'm a little bit freaked out because of course there's always that possibility that they will give me instantaneous brain freeze, in which case our relationship will be short lived, but if that unfortunate reality can be avoided, then I think they're going to be a life changer. No longer when I say "no straw please" will I actually have to glare enviously at those liquid sucking funnels that everyone else gets to play with, because I'll have my very own. I purchased mine from Heather on Etsy, although doubtless there are lots elsewhere. Or I suppose you could make your own. I just don't happen to be so good at the whole metal work thing. Also, this is a cool movement you might want to look into. It's super easy to make a huge difference in straw use, just say no. 
2. My bottle rescue number (this is a completely unscientific calculation of how many bottles I save from being thrown away, or even more horrendously, littered) over the last two days was about twelve. This includes a totally sketch bottle of diet MountainDew (they make that?...) from the gas station, as well as one three bottles rescued right out of the garbage. I tell you this just as an opening for a story, a moment of minor epiphany for me. I was sitting in my English class yesterday, bashing poetry as is my habit when I'm not smart enough to understand it, and the girl directly across the room from me screwed the cap on nice and tight to her water bottle and then tossed it into the garbage to her left. While it was a nice shot, I was still horrified, and being my strident little self, I prepared for a full on battle. But then I paused (unusual) and just observed for a moment. There was no malice in her toss, in fact the way she threw it implied that she didn't really even know what she was doing with it. Recycling that bottle didn't even cross her mind. So instead of asking her if she was intentionally polluting our oceans, I just picked it out of the trash and recycled it after she had left the room. That gave me hope a little bit; there are certainly pig headed people that are just going to tell me again and again that recycling is pointless and that the world is fine and that if nature can't adapt it isn't worth one iota of effort to save it. But for this particular peer, I think she just needs reminding, and a little bit of motivation. 
3. Is recycling worth the energy? Do our maintenance workers really just throw the plastic bottles back in with the garbage? Is it worse for the environment? I don't know, but I intend to find out before I get into anymore circular arguments about it with any of my friends. Regardless plastic use is an issue - "it's not the bin, it's the bottle". We could cut out the whole middle debate if we just don't use plastic in the first place. 
4. Plastics Are Forever link I promised you yesterday. 
5. We had our senior dinner this evening, and I was extremely excited by the enthusiasm that our headmaster was showing for my project. He seems behind me on this whole fighting the plastic epidemic thing, which is terribly exciting considering that it would be just as easy for him to tell me that it would be too expensive. He even seemed open to talking about ridding our school of vending machines. That would be beyond excellent.   

 

Are they not adorable? It bothered me immensely to hear Dr. J talking about how on some islands that serve as major sea turtle nesting grounds, the mothers have to dig through multiple layers of plastic to finally reach sand to bury their eggs, then when the babies hatch many of them eat plastic as their first meal and parish from it. Yeah, I didn't like that. Sea turtles should be revered. Everyone should be given the opportunity to go snorkeling with a sea turtle at some point - then I bet it wouldn't be too hard not to use that plastic bag. They're powerful, awe inspiring, gentle creatures, and the romantic in me wants to believe they have a lovely, generous spirit, in any case they should be treated with respect. Rant of the day, closed.

I've babbled for long enough, much love to all.

a howdy, reflections on marbles, and plasti-gone

Well hello there people of the blogsphere. I don't know if that's what people call it, because I know zilch about blogging, but that's what it's going to be. This is my first blog post ever - exciting, yes? I think so, at least. I thought that it would be appropriate to do a bit of a 'get to know Paige' session, because otherwise we'll just remain in that awkward stranger phase forever. So salut, greetings, howdy, I'm Paige, an idealistic Buffalonian and current high school student. As mentioned somewhere in my information, I like dogs and dance and string cheese. And elephants and music and whales and oatmeal apricot white chocolate cookies and socks and sea turtles and canvas and felt...and lots and lots of other very silly things. Mittens, I love mittens. But anywho, aside from all that I guess you could call me an earth lover, or something akin to it. I really just love nature. I don't love mosquitoes or spiders or mud, or being too hot or being too cold, because that's just asking a lot of a person. But I am enamored of the way spring smells and I enjoy how the ocean pulls you in when you take a step out to sea and I love seeing mist rise off the pond in front of my house on early-autumn mornings. I will straight away admit that while I've always been taught to not leave the lights on and to always close the fridge, I am certainly not the most environmentally generous person the planet has ever seen. Me and my diesel Jetta (named Marve) commute about 55 miles a day and my showers are probably too long, but that's kind of what this blog is going to be about, or at least it's what my aim is. I want this to document my journey from a mildly conscious American citizen, who definitely recycles but forgets her reusable bags in her car sometimes, to someone who can proudly proclaim that she buys local, eats natural, carpools, and has made the switch (along with her family) to a plastic-free lifestyle. 

This blog will be many things. A home for some inspiration by way of poetry (not my own, thank your lucky stars), music, and photography, a place to share cool ideas and projects that I find around the country, a documentation of the people I meet, the things they say that inspire me, the changes I make, how they work, how they don't and how you might go about doing the same things. It will also be a way for me to write about my major project Plasti-Gone which I will doubtless talk lots about later, so I won't babble too much about it now. At its core, Plasti-Gone is a project that I started with two friends, which will create a partnership with schools like ours throughout the Great Lakes region; all the schools involved will sign a pledge promising to gradually rid their campuses completely of one use plastics (yes, vending machines, sporks and all). It's going to be pretty amazing, I hope, and since I've just returned from a plastics symposium (those exist and they are just as cool as they sound - see link below) I'm really energized about the whole idea. Oh, and as far as the blog goes, I'll probably post some random recipes on here too, because who doesn't like food?

I will leave you with one very final thought, because it made my entire weekend in California totally worth the jet-lag. A blue marble. Yep, just a glass marble, on the big side as far as marbles go. Dr. J. Nichols gave everyone at the conference a blue marble, and told us to keep it with us to remind us of why this fight (against plastic pollution in our oceans) is so extremely important. It just stuck with me. That little marble is what our earth looks like from a bazillion miles away. It's flawless and perfectly blue and you can't see the grime and the smog and North Pacific Gyre floating around killing albatross. It inspired me because we could make living on our earth just as immaculate and awesome as that little marble. 

"Live like you love our planet, because you do." Dr Wallace J. Nichols