Plastic-Free family:

I met with Congressman Lee Zeldin and Legislator Kara Hahn yesterday to discuss the petition for plastic-free choices at checkout. While both were very gracious and generous with their time, the meetings also left me with the impression that legislation is going to be a slow and tedious path. If we really want to stymie the leaky faucet when it comes to plastic waste RIGHT NOW, we have to speak up as consumers directly to the brands. [see below for the meeting notes]

Having myself worked within organizations like Amazon and even one owned by Jeff Bezos, I know how change comes about and it's usually driven by an opportunity to gain more customers or prevent the loss of existing ones. The size of this petition and the intentions of those who sign when it comes to future shopping are very critical to its success.

It's on us to prove that online business is already suffering and will continue to suffer attrition from plastic-wise populations if online sellers don't change their harmful shipping and packing practices. The educated consumer wants to shop thoughtfully, right down to the packaging our goods come in and the online marketplace is severely lacking in options.

With that in mind, I am working on a way to quantify the number of current, former and would-be online shoppers who are fed up and want to see better choices at online checkout. This is an online culture and it requires online solutions. Please stay tuned for that as we have a great potential NGO partner who will assist with the research.

Our petition has the potential to shift a wasteful online checkout culture into one that considers sustainability and balance over speed and convenience. If you can spare a few dollars for this cause, please visit the GOFUNDME page to support our research and goal to get this petition to 1,000,000  before we take it to Amazon and other major retailers like Walmart, Jet and even Freshdirect. You can also give here on Change.org to fund the platform that allowed us to start this petition. 

In summary, I will say the initial legislative meetings were eye-opening and I think there is more to do with those leaders. In the short term however, I think we as petitioners can move faster than government. It's clear that this is an issue that can gain bipartisan support since it can help save taxpayer money and help the environment in one shot but its actually a marketplace issue we may be able to balance out without government interference. Let's see. I will continue meeting with legislators in the meantime and to tackle this in any way that is likely to get the fastest results. 

For those who still suggest boycott, I'll tackle that in a future post. Boycotting without a clear message as to why can actually worsen the issue and could severely impact small businesses. It has to be organized, well communicated and designed to minimize impact on our small sellers. 

Thank you for listening!

Nicole Delma

---- Optional Meeting Notes and Detail ----
Meeting 1 Detail: Legislator Kara Hahn
First, I met with Legislator Kara Hahn of Suffolk County's 5th District who is  Chairwoman of the Legislature’s Environment, Planning and Agriculture Committee. She is also heading up the regional Recycling task force formed Dec 17.  Ms. Hahn was very familiar with the plastics issue and its specific impact on our areas already troubled/virtually defunct recycling capabilities. Our landfill is pretty much full and only taking incinerate which is contributing to air quality issues and peak cancer rates.  We discussed how the increase in plastic bags and plastic film by shippers like Amazon is further driving down the feasibility for Recyclers to operate efficiently as the materials clog up machinery and contaminate otherwise recyclable material bundles like cardboard, causing them to be rejected or devalued. We also discussed how we both noticed an increase in illegally dumped materials, likely due to the costs or inconvenience associated with proper disposal. Illegal dumping is also about a lack of education and Mrs. Hahn reiterated that education was an area of focus for the Recycling task force here on Long Island. 

Next Steps:
She invited me to reach back out if/when we determine whether legislation is the best way to address the excessive shipping waste issue. While the regional recycling task force committee is 'full', I was invited to join the meetings and suggest any others in the Suffolk country region do the same or find out where similar meetings are being held in your area. Lack of access to recycling and the collapse of that market now that China is refusing our trash are key issues most know little about. 

Meeting 2 Detail: Congressman Lee Zeldin
Congressman Zeldin was congratulatory on the success of the petition so far and curious what the intended next steps were. He wanted to know when we would take it to Amazon and how we planned to do so. This is not the first time we've met as I visited him to speak about two environmental issues in the past so we were able to jump right in o the issue at hand. He seemed to agree (not disagree) that we are in more of a crisis mode here on Long island than most residents are aware of because soon all of our garbage will need to be trucked 100 to 7000 miles away and very little will be recycled. He did not discuss specific plans or next steps for dealing with the waste issue unique to Long Island nor was he familiar with the Amazon shipping materials as he mentioned this was something he did not get involved in at home (his wife did). We looked at the different types of packaging and I explained why the plastic and film was particularly troublesome. I explained to him the potential size of this issue and the need for better education around recycling, better access to recycling and a need to reform our infrastructure to support more reusable products in general. I left a bamboo coffee cup with him as an example of one of the great plastic-like but totally natural products we can start to rely on. I got the impression that he was not overly passionate about this issue but also that he didn't oppose it in any way. 

Next Steps: 
Congressman Zeldin offered to help open doors to keep the momentum going so I plan to follow up on that and ask to be included in any future conversations pertaining to waste management and to get deeper access to cost assessments for waste management on Long Island. I agreed to circle back as I meet with more representatives and will be asking for a statement from his office in relation to one of the proposed solutions we discussed that he did seem to think would work for Long Island. 
 [photo by Zeldin staffer]