Sustainability – My Inaccessible Life

Image Description: A screen shot of a tweet from Natalie Bennett @natalieben. Text reads: “#GoodNews Well done Killarney. If you can do it, why not everywhere?
“Killarney becomes first Irish town to ban single-use coffee cups”
PlasticWaste #Plastic Pollution”

The tweet is linked to an article from The Observer, linked to theguardian.com showing a picture of a street with colourful buildings and outdoor seating presumably from a restaurant visible. The title of the article reads “’It was a plague’: Killarney becomes first Irish town to ban single-use coffee cups”.

The use of reusable cups in places is not something new, or something which I object to at all. Reusable cups are clearly great for the environment. The problem comes with how you wash them, and the fact that washing these reusable cups is a task left to the customer.

This can often make these reusable cups and inaccessible to disabled people like myself. meaning that we run into problems when trying to clean up so they can be refilled in places. Personally this is not something I am able to do, in my experiences places will not refill cup that has been used without your cleaning it first. I even explained that I would be very happy to have the cup simply rinsed out, yet they didn’t want to do this. And while I understand there reasoning for this it resulted in a reusable cup becomes a single cup for me. So then I wonder what the point on me even carrying a reusable cup is if I can’t reuse it?

I do understand the concerns with refilling used cups that are not clean, but if someone is unable to clean their own cup, I don’t see how you can have it both ways. How you can expect them to use something that’s inaccessible to them and not help them to use it.

Let me see if I can explain for those of you reading this who may not understand why I cannot wash a reusable cup. The biggest reason for me is the spoons involved in cleaning it. It is simply energy I can’t afford to use every day. Then we are talking about having to do this multiple times a day. Including finding somewhere to wash the cup out that is also accessible, it all costs more spoons I don’t have.

This is a bigger problem at least for me personally than it may appear. I have struggled for a lot of my life with chronic dehydration, and if I was restricted to the use of only cups require more spoons I can very easily see myself further restricting my liquid intake, and becoming more dehydrated.

If places are only going to allow the use of reusable cups instead of single use cups, this makes Ann accessible to someone who can’t clean their own reusable cup.

Ideas of sustainability seem to cost accessibility, the removal of plastic straws are a perfect example of this. A small improvement in sustainability that was implemented with little or no consideration for the impact on disabled people. It didn’t change anything for non disabled people so the argument was lost.

This example is more easily made accessible. Simply, allow restaurants and coffee shops to rinse reusable cups for customers. It’s not a perfect solution but it is a solution this could work.

All I am really asking is can we please consider disabled people in movements of sustainability. We often need single use products, straws, cups, ready cut fruit, to make the world accessible to us. I’m not asking for sustainability to be forgotten, but simply for accessibility to be considered as part of sustainability to. Disabled people live in the world to.

Are there things you try to practice daily to live a more sustainable lifestyle?

This isn’t as simple as it might seem when you’re disabled.

A lot of sustainability seems to ignore accessibility. Straws are a brilliant example of this.

In the grand scheme of using less plastic, not using plastic straws only saves about 0.025% of the plastic being used.

Image Description: Two pink and white straws sticking out of a green drink.

While saving any plastic is obviously good, the importance of not using plastic straws was blown out of proportion, as if it could change the planet. I don’t know if you saw the campaign?

But straws are an accessibility aid to others. There are to me. And paper straws which are often the replacement for plastic straws currently, are not as good of an accessibility aid for lots of people as plastic straws. They break easily so people need more, people can have allergic reactions to metal which is sometimes used instead, or straws may not be available at a venue altogether.

And I often forget until I use them, just how much I benefit from using them. Which is perhaps some form of internalised ableism, in convincing myself that I don’t need to use a straw. Or maybe it’s the difficulty of having to clean plastic straws, which is part of the thought process involved in my carrying one.

The same applies to reusable cups. I want to use them. But reusable cups need to be given to the person filling them clean, and it’s not always possible for me as a disabled person to clean them in between.

But anyway, the point of this post is don’t judge people who can’t act sustainability. They might want to, but it simply might not be a possibility.

My Inaccessible Life

Tag: Sustainability

This isn’t so simple when you’re disabled.