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Kitchen Warriors
An anti-plastic brigade is cooking their way out of the climate crisis
A few years ago, Dani Schuller started cooking. Not just dinner for her family, or packed lunch for work, or the occasional fruit pie. Anything she would have purchased in a package, she began making from scratch — cream cheese, yogurt, crackers, “Oreo” cookies, loaves of bread, chicken nuggets, even chocolate syrup.
She did this not because she was a particularly passionate home cook. She did it because of plastic. She did it because recycling is a myth. She’s part of a nationwide movement of climate change activists fighting the battle from their kitchens.
Of all the plastic trash we make — and we’ve made 8.3 billion metric tons of it so far — only about 9 percent of current plastic waste is recycled. Twelve percent is incinerated, which is not particularly great for air quality or health because more than 99 percent of plastic is derived from oil, natural gas, and coal. And because its destruction by incineration also uses fossil fuels, environmental groups now recognize plastic as a major contributor to climate change.
The rest of that plastic waste — 79 percent — ends up in landfills, mostly in developing nations, where it can take 500 to 1,000 years to degrade. Every year, 13 million metric tons of plastic arrive in…
