Fwd: Plastic detox update #1
Loretta Lohman
Plastic detox update #1I expected there’d be a high financial cost to avoiding plastic. I didn’t realize there’d be a social cost, too.
I’ve been trying to “detox my life” from plastic for a few weeks now. It’s had its ups and downs. One thing I’ve noticed is that avoiding plastic has a high up-front mental cost. Before you can replace the products leeching hormone-disrupting chemicals and microplastics into your skin, mouth and lungs, you first have to identify them. That identification process requires a level of vigilance that, frankly, I am not used to deploying toward the objects in my home. Before doing this, it had not even registered to me that wearing invisible braces meant I was literally chomping on plastic 22 hours a day¹. (Attentiveness in general may not be my strong suit.) But after several days of inspecting stuff I’d previously only assessed for ease-of-use and aesthetics, I realized that even I—a person who’d thought of herself as fairly plastic-conscious²—had a lot more to notice. I’d never looked closely enough to realize my electric water kettle had little plastic parts on the inside; that my metal water bottle had a plastic straw; or that the pasta pot I’d thought was ceramic for the last four years was actually nonstick. I’d never clocked that I owned exactly zero non-polyester sweatshirts or sweatpants or bras or underwear. And I’d never stopped to think that my Ninja Creami was basically a tiny lathe for shaving microplastics.
The act of noticing has not been completely annoying, though. While it was certainly easier to move through my life without really thinking about the objects I was using and touching, in retrospect, it was a little like sleepwalking. Being more mindful about my stuff has made me feel weirdly good about myself, like I’m at least trying to take care of me. I’m also getting this fun placebo effect from sorting out and storing all the polyester clothes in my closet³. Turns out, wearing natural-material clothes makes me feel about 20 percent healthier at all times—even if my partner did tease me for looking like a “crunchy food co-op member.” (To be fair, we were on our way to the food co-op when he said it.)
The act of buying new, non-plastic stuff is a different story. This, friends, feels mostly bad. I’ve already spent a little over $1000 replacing high-impact items in my life—workout clothes, water kettle, underwear, etc—and I’m not even close to done. And while I can admit to a slight dopamine rush when I get something new and high-quality (I “oohed” and “aahed” when I got my stainless steel water kettle), the overarching feeling I’ve gotten from the buying process has been financial dread—not just for myself, but for anyone who chooses to move away from products that are demonstrably harming our health and the planet.⁴ And that financial dread quickly moves into rage when I remember that plastic is only “affordable” because it’s been made artificially cheap by policy. Since 2012, U.S. plastics plants have received $9 billion in state and local tax subsidies, shifting part of the industry’s costs onto the public before its products even reach the shelf. Combined with all the other subsidies we grant the fossil fuel industry, its extensive lobbying power, and the fact that we don’t have extended producer responsibility laws, I feel like I’m constantly being reminded that plastic is only cheap because its real costs are not built into the price. Because our officials care more about this massive corporate donor than the health of our bodies and the planet. Anyway! Tracy recently asked me what’s been the most unexpected part of the plastic detox process so far. I told her: I always knew avoiding plastic would be annoying. I didn’t realize I would also have to become annoying. (Even more so than usual.) Because
in addition to the mental cost and the financial
cost, there is a social cost to avoiding
plastic. You have to be willing to become the
person who constantly interrupts the flow of
traffic to ask for a metal fork or a real glass,
and bear whatever reaction people may have. I
felt this most acutely last week when I traveled
with a group of friends to Nashville, where
plastic was the default material holding almost
every piece of food and drink I received. If I
had wanted to seriously avoid plastic that
weekend, I would have had to opt out of whole
pieces of the trip. I imagined it was like
trying to be vegetarian in the 1990s, or
gluten-free before 2010: functionally impossible
unless you’re willing to make huge social
sacrifices. I’m not. I just drank from the
plastic cup. The
upside, though, is that this also means there’s
something useful you can do even if you’re not
in a position to move away from plastic
yourself. You can be cool to the people who are
trying. My friends were cool to me, and it made
a big difference. A couple even said they wanted
to try it. I’ll update you all again when I get the results of my pee test back. Make sure you’re subscribed to get it. In related recent news…...Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to HEATED to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A subscription gets you:
©
2026 Emily Atkin
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