Category: Reduce/Reuse/Recycle

December 21, 2019

by drplasticpicker

This post is 1 week late, but better later than completely forgotten! Having to be accountable to our blog readers is great. There are so many made-up tasks we have given ourselves in life, but at least the tasks I have assigned myself through drplasticpicker.com have environmental positives. We are about to leave on our road trip from Southern California to Utah. This trip will entail a different series of blog post – so I want to mentally close out what happened in Newport Beach. Plus, my mother-in-law (who I love and respect) is annonying me slightly and writing is a good way to let off steam. Mr. Plastic Picker’s parents live with us and we get along 99.9% of the time, but it’s been 15 years and once in a while my mother-in-law and I will annoy each other.

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December 19, 2019

by drplasticpicker

So much of life and career success is about timing and support. Many of the reasons why I am in middle-management is that I had my children with Mr. Plastic Picker relatively young while in residency and fellowship. I’m in my 40s, and while many of my same-age physician cohort still have young children – mine are older. I have more time and energy to focus on work (and plastic picking!) It is the nearing the week of Christmas. I remember as a young physician being stressed this time of year trying to arrange for childcare or school camps, coordinating work-schedules with an even busier physician spouse, trying to cover a half-staffed clinic, trying not to get sick and still being there for my own children. Mr. Plastic Picker and I just hit 10 years with our organization. This milestone reminds me how important it is for us to support our younger colleagues.

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December 15, 2019

by drplasticpicker

I am writing to you from the far off lands of Newport Beach, California. Mr. Plastic Picker and I are at a corporate meeting for our organization to celebrate 10 years.  We are staying at a super fancy hotel where they have valet parking at $30 a night, but the hotel room is covered as are our meals for the day’s programs.  Ten years ago when we started with this organization, the corporate rah-rah and indoctrination used to scare me. Others would ask me half in jest, “Did you drink the kool-aid?” But in all seriousness, all large organizations have similar models and I do believe that ours is more egalitarian. I do believe that here independent thinking is encouraged if you work through the system. I have been able to enact positive changes as a middle manager. But I remain in my heart drplasticpicker wanting to take my own path. But I am here, and I will partake and enjoy. We will sit with our friends who started as young physicians with us together 10 years ago and hear about how the corporation will take care of us.  But I will be thinking the entire time, how can I take care of the earth?  Because in the end, we cannot rely only on large organizations but also must make the changes within ourselves. 

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Dr. Plastic Picker is a “A Personal Plastic-Picking Blog: Fighting Ocean Plastic Pollution One Piece At a Time .” Staying true to this mission, I am here to work against the tide of plastic pollution. The day I found those 9 sunglasses and Humanized My Little Pony Plastic Toy Figure, was literally a wave of plastic washed onto the shores of the half mile of Pacific Ocean coast that I transverse. There were four local residents of our town who just happened to be on the beach that morning also, and we turned to each other. We knew each other because we see eachother on the beaches in the mornings usually in our own contemplative worlds. But that morning we held heavy clothing items together that were weighed down by seaweed, sand and ocean water. These items required two people to carry them the long stretch to the trash bins. Together we heaved those items into the bins. And those 9 sunglasses above we collected in the little pile together.

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December 7, 2019

by drplasticpicker

It has started. It is December 7, 2019. Eighteen more days until Christmas and now commences the mad rush. I feel it at clinic. Parents have that dazed look in their eyes as I ask them how things are going. Work, school and family social demands pile up. Dr. Plastic Picker went to my first work holiday party last night. I tried to deliver good comprehensive care to my 28th patient of the day who tested positive for Influenzae A, and still make it to a 6pm work party that was 45 minute drive away. I failed. Took care of the family first, which is always the right thing to do. I rushed home to cleanse my face and my blepharitis-plaqued eyes, put on a clean layer of foundation and pencil in my eyebrows that disappeared in the late 90s. Arrived there at 650pm. Tis the season.

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November 21, 2019

by drplasticpicker

In the two and half months since I have started keeping count, I have collected 150 aluminum cans from the beach. I have dug them out half buried in the sand, climbed up the sand cliffs, tramped under the lifeguard towers, and thought about diving into poison ivy (which I did not). But that total makes me very excited. Let me explain to you why.

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November 5, 2019

by drplasticpicker.com

I tend to find the most interesting things Sunday or Monday mornings if I go ocean plastic walking early. This last Monday, I left very early as I need to get my walk in and still get home in time to get breakfast ready and get the kids out of the house for school. I am lucky in that my father-in-law does the actual drop off. We are a multi-generational household. We take care of them financially, and they help us with some childcare. Yes, I know I am very lucky. And I have co-existed happily with my mother-in-law for almost 15 years with 1 kitchen. The first two years was really difficult for me, but the last 13 we are two peas in a pod for the most part. I think that tells you a lot about my character.

Anyway, Monday morning I saw several new sights. I saw another dead stingray with a portion of it’s midthorax missing. There must be some particuarly delicious organ there that birds like to eat? I’ll have to look that up. I saw a fishing type vessel very close to the shore. It was periously close to the surfers and I was worried for the surfers. I saw an older gentlemen who looked a bit like he was not quite all there, but well kempt and wearing a newish red LIFEGUARD sweater. I know you can buy those anywhere, but he had a large plastic bag and picking up trash but with an official-looking large clear bag. I wonder if that is what old retired lifeguards do? Anyway, we were close in proximity and I told him, “I saw a dead stingray over there! It’s the second one I’ve seen this week.” He wondered over to the direction I pointed and I yelled back, “Don’t pick it up though!” Then he wandered away in a different direction. I don’t think he was homeless. Dead stingray and possible lifeguard pensioner or well kempt homeless man? Sometimes I think God (I am not particualy religious but plastic picking has pushed me to become more spiritual) is leading me on this path.

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October 30, 2019

by drplasticpicker

It’s a scary time of year tomorrow! It’s scary for children’s teeth from the sugar, for their circadian rhythms due to staying up late trick-o-treating, and for the earth! Most Halloween candy comes wrapped in plastic, and many new Halloween costumes are made of plastic.  This is my attempt to reduce the plastic consumption this Halloween.  I have 5 things that are under my semi-control this Halloween. Those 5 things are: what kind of treats we are handing out, what my contribution to the office party will be, my costume, my middle-schooler’s costume, and my high school son’s costume.  This is so far how we have done.

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