Earth Day: How one grocery shopper takes steps to avoid ‘pointless plastic’

By JENNIFER McDERMOTT and MICHAEL HILL
Associated Press

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Nature wraps bananas and oranges in peels. But in some modern supermarkets, they’re bagged or wrapped in plastic too. For Judith Enck, that’s the epitome of pointless plastic. The global theme for Earth Day on Monday is planet vs. plastic. The environmental movement is calling for “the end of plastics for the sake of human and planetary health.” People are increasingly breathing, eating and drinking tiny particles of plastic, and millions of tons of plastic wind up in the ocean each year. And plastic is everywhere in modern society. But Enck, a former EPA regional administrator who now heads up the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, says there are simple things people can do at the grocery store if they want to use less plastic.