Like many of us, I have forsaken single-use plastic bags in favor of the reusable, but the other day, as I wrapped half of an avocado in saran wrap, I thought about the sheer extent to which plastic pervades our lives. We need not always be resentful, Christine Jeavans points out, as it would be hard to imagine modern medicine without plastic, but what might be even harder to imagine is a whole month without any plastic. Most of us try to wean ourselves off the tendency to get food to-go and to use disposable coffee cups, but Jeavans has taken it a step (or rather a marathon) further—she’ll avoid wine for a month just in case the cork contains plastic. She also points out that even toothbrushes are made of plastic, which is obvious after you think about it, but once again demonstrates how plastic has infiltrated our lives. She will be blogging about her month long quest here, and I am looking forward to learning from her experiences, even more so than I was looking forward to writing this post’s headline.

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