With the price of oil topping $135 a barrel last month, and gas prices following the same upward trend, many people are looking for ways to reduce gasoline consumption by carpooling more and driving less. And fuel prices ripple through the economy, affecting everything from the price of food to fertilizer to chicken feed.

Oil permeates our lives in ways many people may not even realize. Truly eliminating our reliance on it will be a challenge. Besides being in the obvious places—the fuel tanks of cars, trucks, airplanes, and buildings—oil is present in more subtle, but far-reaching places, such as plastics. And plastics are everywhere: food storage bags, containers and wrap; grocery bags, trash bags, disposable tableware, water bottles, children’s toys, baby bottles, diapers, medical supplies, garden mulch, greenhouses, flower pots, computers, all types of packaging—the list goes on. President Bush was right when he said we were “addicted to oil.” It’s hard to imagine living our lives without many of the things on this list.

Furthermore, plastics are not biodegradable—they will be around forever, somewhere on our planet. Disturbingly, they are turning up in our oceans and have been found to be the cause of death for fish and sea birds alike, who mistake bits of floating plastic for food, such as fish eggs. In 1999 Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in California, conducted a study that found six times more plastic fragments by weight in the central Pacific than the zooplankton typically found there. Further study by Moore found that plastic outweighs plankton by a factor of 2.5 in the surface waters of Southern California.

This week a team from the Algalita Foundation will be setting sail from California to Hawaii aboard the raft “Junk”—made from 15,000 plastic bottles found in the ocean. One of the team members, Dr. Marcus Eriksen, was quoted on the “Junkraft blog” as saying, “Over 10,000 pounds of plastic trash enter the oceans every day from just the city of Los Angeles. Our raft has a total of about 350 pounds—a drop in the bucket. If adding that relatively small amount more of plastics to the oceans is enough to get the issue talked about on national television it’s absolutely worth it, because right now, virtually no one is giving this issue much thought.”

(To keep tabs on the Junk voyage, visit http://junkraft.blogspot.com.)

There are good reasons to reduce our use of plastics. It sounds like a daunting challenge, but as with any such challenge it’s best to tackle it one step at a time. Think of the plastics that fill your life, and start with the ones that are real throwaways: plastic bottles, plastic grocery bags, plastic wrap, plastic tableware, and the like.

If it’s really necessary for you to have bottled water, buy it in sizes of two gallons or more, and use a refillable thermos to take it with you on walks, bike rides, boat rides, etc. Plastic grocery bags are easily replaced by cloth or string bags. Many grocery stores sell cloth grocery totes, and there are several places to buy them online. In addition to the heavy canvas grocery bags, there are also lighter totes available for produce, to help eliminate the need for those flimsy plastic bags you reach for in the produce section of the grocer’s to bag up loose vegetable like beans or zucchini.

A tougher nut to crack is eliminating the need for plastic trash bags. In fact, often the town dump or the local transfer station has a “pay as you throw” program, and the fees are based on the use of garbage-can-size plastic bags. But there are some solutions brewing. Some manufacturers are now experimenting with cornstarch-based plastics designed to break down in the natural environment, and have developed trash bags that are less objectionable, such as Biobags ™ or EcoSafe-6400™ compostable bags. (Although it does seem like a step in the right direction, and is likely to have positive short-term effects, the development of “alternative” plastics could help perpetuate the values of what some have called our “throwaway culture,” which helped bring us plastics in the first place.)

It’s a little more difficult to find nonplastic solutions for packing your lunch. One option is to employ reusable plastic containers to hold sandwiches, rather than one-use plastic wrap. The containers come in just about all shapes and sizes—short square ones are perfect for sandwiches. Smaller containers work for lunch go-withs like chips and pickles. One company, Wrap-N-Mat, Inc. has developed an innovative product to wrap sandwiches. The 13-by-13-inch reusable sandwich wraps are made of cloth lined with either PVC or PEVA; the latter, made without chloride, is more eco-friendly. (Materials found in both linings are on the FDA safe list for food contact surfaces.)

If you can’t find suitable replacements for plastic bags in storing foods, the next best option is to wash the bags and reuse them. Bags that have contained raw meats, and some “wet” foods, should probably not be reused. But those used in storing dry foods—breads, cookies, snacks, etc.—can easily be rinsed out, inverted for drying, and used again. According to the Sierra Club, reusing a bag meant for just one use can have a big impact. The club says that “a sturdy, reusable bag needs only be used 11 times to have a lower environmental impact than using 11 disposable plastic bags.” Additionally, it says, “when one ton of plastic bags is reused or recycled, the energy equivalent of 11 barrels of oil are saved.”

If you’ve come up with a way to eliminate some plastics from your life, we’d like to hear about it. Send your ideas to editor@harvardpress.com.