won't you try?

my Samantha Jones approach to #PlasticFreeJuly; the dangers of casual, normalized pollution; and meditations on the ocean

Jul 09, 2025

Nothing heightens my heat-wave-induced-rage more than witnessing fellow New Yorkers (young! hip! progressive! inclusive!) pollute so…casually.

Walking down the street, sitting at a café table, lounging in the park, subwaying to the beach—there they go! Sweaty hands clasped around flimsy, single-use plastic cups from Blank Street and Paloma. Deer Park and Smartwater bottles peeping out of backpacks and purses.

As if the very material in their clutches (plastics are made from fossil fuels) isn’t linked to the environmental crisis we’re enduring together. As if their personal pollution is somehow different, or more isolated, than others’. As if all this mess goes…somewhere, right?

That somewhere isn’t pretty. Over 95% of the plastics we consume don’t actually get recycled, despite our sorting and goodwill. Instead, they wind up in landfills, burned in incinerators, floating in our oceans, and swimming through our bloodstream via microplastics.

The production of single-use plastic is only growing. According to Nature, global demand for plastics has “quadrupled over the past decadesand it is projected to double by 2050.” And by that year, devastatingly, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.

So as plastics become more and more ubiquitous, and as our recycling rates remain so dismal, how can we avoid their complete normalization, and not grow numb to the problem?

It starts with bearing witness to—and accepting the severity of—the crisis. The shelves of bottled water in bodegas, the stuffed garbage bags outside restaurants, the plastic-wrapped fruits and veggies at the store, the litter along the highway, the textiles in your closet. Plastic is everywhere, and overwhelmingly so.

But accepting this bleak reality allows us space to find some autonomy within it, even if it feels futile. And when it comes to relieving the earth of our pollution, we have many options to try, and no option but to try.

E.B White spoke to the conundrum of choosing to save or savor this world. But perhaps the two are intrinsically linked, symbiotic. In savoring this world, we save it. And in saving it, we find even more to savor.

So how can your daily habits show your commitment to this planet? How can you reframe the “sacrifice” of carrying a reusable bottle or coffee cup instead as an act of devotion? A beacon of hope? A sign of respect?

Can you try? Can you find peace—purpose even—in the trying?

climate baddie SJ; Brooklyn on any given day; the scourge of our oceans

reverence + devotion

something on which to meditate, and something on which to act.

The ocean is a place of refuge. And after weeks spent skinny-dipping in coves and crawling along waterfront crags on Sherkin Island, County Cork, I recently found myself back on very different shores in Rockaway Beach.

Each seaside communion clarified my calling to work toward her health, and to help others make the connection between their lifestyle and the water we depend on, relate to, find joy in. Mary Oliver wrote it best:

I am in love with Ocean
lifting her thousands of white hats
in the chop of the storm,
or lying smooth and blue, the
loveliest bed in the world.
In the personal life, there is
always grief more than enough,
a heart load for each of us
on the dusty road. I suppose
there is a reason for this, so I will be
patient, acquiescent. But I will live
nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting
equally in all blast and welcome
of her sorrowless, salt self.

If you’re lucky enough to get to a beach this summer, go prepared. Not just physically, but spiritually. The choice feels clearer if you can connect the action with an intention.

I love the ocean, so I pack my drink in a reusable bottle.
I love the ocean, so I don’t leave the beach littered with trash.
I love the ocean, so I will notice or pick up pollution on the beach.
I love the ocean, so I commit to preventing further harm to her.

How do you show your love for the ocean? Let me know in the comments.

let it be this simple: if you love the ocean, don’t buy single-use plastics. try!

the craic

now listening: Solange’s call to do nothing without intention (this album is tooooooooo too good); this Peter Gabriel banger that I’m interpreting as an IDGAF anthem on fighting the system, even when it feels exhausting!
now eating: fresh, raw, packageless, delicious veggies from Maison Jar—the only way to stay cool in this increasingly-common extreme heat.
now signing: this form and this form about ConEd raising utilities once more, and NYC raising rent rates for the fourth time in three years.
now looking: for a job LOL. If you’ve got leads in the environmental world: comms, project management, gardening, anything IRL, LMK!

the GOAT; the TRUTH; the HAUL; the REUSABLES

thank you // go raibh maith agat

Each of us comes from a culture or lineage rooted in reverence for the earth. For many, that divine connection to the land was severed—by force, by choice, by both. Confronting and mitigating the climate crisis will depend on a great remembering of that connection, and a reestablishment of traditions, practices, and spiritualities we can employ to honor it. Thank you for working to remember.
PS: 🎶 Here’s my ongoing “dark peace” playlist. Enjoy!