June Updates

A happy holiday weekend to one and all! We are so proud of the work we have done in the month of June. TAPTF Society volunteers and donors helped us deliver 355 meals to families in our area and over $1800 of dry goods and produce. A big thank you to everyone who made this possible.

This month, plastic waste is in our sights. We are currently exploring a partnership with Ecoplastic in Wilmington, DE. Cass has thoughtfully designed blocks created from regular household waste plastic, that Ecoplastic is willing to produce for us if we donate the cost of the molds. These blocks can then be used for building structures, or reinforce other building materials to create sustainable, insulated walls and foundations. This summer consider hanging onto those soda bottles and milk jugs, as we are confident that we can create something wonderful out of refuse. 

TAPTFS was proud to be a part of the ‘sacred initiative’ ground breaking ceremony. This mission will collaborate on a community garden project celebrating the Black and Latino communities at the historic Richard Allen School. We were fortunate to have Council Woman Christina Diaz Malone and DE Hispanic Commission chair Charito Calvachi Mateyko with us! Check out the flyer below for the details about the next celebration on July 6th.

Mr. Trash Wheel is cleaning up the waterways of Baltimore. Intercepting over 3 million pounds of trash, he’s making the harbor not only cleaner and more beautiful, but also a nicer home for local wildlife as well as waterfront businesses. Learn more about Mr. Trash Wheel’s Technology. 

“It’s only one straw,” said 8 billion people.

Plastic pollution is a huge problem. It is not too late to fix it, but it will require a fundamental shift in thinking about how plastics are manufactured, used and discarded. If no changes are made to the current course, we will be facing 99 million tons of uncontrolled plastic waste in the environment by 2030. University of Georgia engineering professor Jenna Jambeck puts that into perspective for us: “Imagine the equivalent of one dump truck tipping a load of plastic into the ocean every minute every day for a year,” she says. “How about a football stadium filled with plastic every day? Or enough plastic to cover Rhode Island or the country of Luxembourg ankle deep? It’s in the realm of the incomprehensible.”   

While there are parallels to the creation of plastic and fossil fuels, both involve oil, the two are dissimilar in an important way – plastic’s persistence. There is some chance, however remote, that CO2 could be removed to an extent from the environment using technology and natural ecosystem restoration, there is no such alternative for plastic. Plastic is Permanent. 

Plastic production has increased continuously since the 1950s, from 1.8 million tons in 1950 to 465 million tons in 2018. As of 2017, 7 billion of the 8.8 billion tons produced globally over this entire period have become waste. We can definitively measure that – because it’s all. still. here. 

So, what can we do? We know the main moves: recycle! Say no thank you to plastic straws, bring your reusable bag to the store, upgrade to reusable glass containers and slip one in your purse if you expect to take home a doggy-bag, ditch the disposable lighter, and buy fresh produce as opposed to frozen. But most importantly, start thinking bigger. Don’t purchase from companies that aren’t supporting your sustainable efforts. Only 100 corporations are responsible for 90% of single-use plastic waste, with these four in particular generating more than 6 million tons of plastic a year alone. 

We can all do our part, but pressure to large corporations will get us there more quickly, and your money talks!