Several chance encounters with the idea of happiness over the past week got me thinking about how living with less plastic contributes to greater happiness. As I mixed these two ideas in my mind, it became clear that it’s not always a simple direct correlation. New unexpected layers and ideas emerge. This is what James Altucher would call idea sex.
I certainly find that living with less plastic makes life more meaningful – and that makes me happier.
Here’s one example. Buying food fresh and in bulk (such as seeds and grains and berries and veggies carried in reusable bags) avoids plastic packaging and promotes more home cooking and more creativity in cooking. Home cooking promotes more family meals at regular times. This promotes greater family cohesiveness and sharing of daily experiences. Without those family meals cooked from scratch with care and love, I doubt I would be as up-to-date on my son’s latest snowboarding moves or bmx dreams. Now I know what it means to “case a jump” – but please don’t ask me to explain it.
And there are lots of other easy examples of how living with less plastic improves life and contributes to happiness: exposure to fewer toxins means better health means a happier state of being; less plastic waste in the environment means cleaner green spaces for happier humans and animals. But happiness through less plastic use is not always easily achieved. In my mind, this is all the more reason to strive for plastic-free happiness more than ever before and in the broadest sense by making happiness a focus in all aspects of one’s life.
A few days ago I came across a copy of the November 21, 2014, New York Times Style Magazine, T, in which there was an article about an annual bike race – the Tour of the Dragon – through the mountains of Bhutan. Doing what I do, a particular statement in the article piqued my interest: “There are no plastic bags allowed in Bhutan.”
The Bhutan ban on plastic bags and was originally put in place back in 1999 (with updated legislation in 2005 and 2012) to decrease growing urban waste. It flows from a broader strategy to contribute to Bhutan’s trademark philosophy of Gross National Happiness: the idea that the happiness of the people of Bhutan takes precedence over the country’s gross national product. But enforcement of the ban has been very difficult and slow going.
And Bhutan is not actually an oasis of happiness. There are issues of poverty, chronic unemployment, corruption, and a troubling recent human rights history of ethnic cleansing. So there may be a ban on plastic bags – which is fabulous – but as with every other plastic bag ban in the world, for it to work, a strong majority of the citizens need to embrace it, and for that to happen, maybe those citizens need to be truly happy.
Later in the week I heard James Altucher interviewing Gretchen Rubin, author of the besteller The Happiness Project.
She decided to spend a year focusing on being happy. Does that sound selfish – maybe even frivolous – in this day and age when there are so many problems around the world? She has had this response to her project and the book. She said some have even called happiness “not morally appropriate,” which to me is an utterly bizarre comment. As she explained, the research shows that there is power and goodness for all in happiness:
“Happier people are more altruistic. They are more interested in the problems of other people and they’re more interested in the problems of the world. They give away more money. They volunteer more time. They’re more likely to help out if a family member or colleague or friend needs a hand, because when people are happy, they have the emotional wherewithal to turn outward and they don’t think about themselves that much. They can think about other people and other problems.
But when we’re unhappy, we tend to get defensive and isolated and preoccupied with our own situation. And so if it is selfish to want to be happier, which some people worry about, then we should be selfish, if only for selfless reasons. Because it’s really by being happy ourselves that we give oursleves the emotional wherewithal to really turn outward to others.” (Emphasis added.)
So that got me thinking that because living with less plastic is necessarily all about turning outward and focusing on one’s plastic use habits and the broader world around us, then the happier one is, the more effective one’s plastic use reduction is going to be.
A few days later I was picking up my son from the local ski hill and the song “Happy” by iconic singer songwriter fashion designer Pharrell Williams came on the radio.
Now here’s a guy who is actively seeking and spreading happiness, as far as I can tell. And he is devoted to reducing plastic waste in huge way, having curated a collaborative project – RAW for the Oceans – to retrieve plastic waste from the oceans, break it down into chips to create fibre, spin it into denim yarn mixed with cotton, and weave and knit that yarn into uniquely styled clothing.
The intentions are superb and the clothing is funky. And the whole initiative is generating huge public awareness of the problem of oceanic plastic polution.
But… ironically this initiative may actually end up being a major contributor to global aquatic plastic pollution.
Solid research is showing that tiny fibres from plastic-derived clothing are becoming an enormous global pollutant as these microplastic fibres are released when the clothes are washed and, being tiny, go right through wastewater treatment systems out into our aquatic environments.
They contaminate the water and sediment and are ingested by water-based wildlife, and make their way back up the food chain to us – concentrating and toxifying as they go. Mark Browne, the leading researcher on the issue, estimates in a seminal study that a single garment can produce more than 1900 such plastic microfibres per wash in the wastewater.
So as this research gets out, we could eventually see some big changes in the synthetic clothing industry – at least among the ethically-minded manufacturers like, for example, Patagonia, though they currently think the evidence is not clear enough to take action on. And hopefully, Pharrell can find a non-polluting way to make use of oceanic plastic waste.
The message from all these erotic idea ramblings: None of us is perfect – not even Bhutan or Pharrell Williams with their inspiring positive actions – but we all have it in our power to become happier, and taking action to live with less plastic can help us do just that, even if it’s imperfect action. 🙂
What do you think? Let us know in the comments below. We’d love to hear why you think less plastic leads to more happiness, or not.
– Jay Sinha
Photo credits: Bhutan (Simon Roberts, The New York Times), The Happiness Project (http://www.gretchenrubin.com/), Pharrell Williams (http://rawfortheoceans.g-star.com/).