A whole lot has changed since June 2007, when Terry decided there was enough plastic in the world, and she didn't want to add any more.
The 44-year-old accountant from Oakland, Calif., felt sick and was home that day, idly browsing the Internet.
She came across an article detailing a Texas-sized flotilla of plastic trash in an area of the Pacific Ocean known as the gyre, now dubbed the Eastern Garbage Patch.
Here, where currents converge, more than a million items per square kilometer bob at the surface.
There's more plastic than plankton. As it breaks down, it absorbs pollutants. And then fish eat it.
Terry was aghast. "Out there in the middle of nowhere were all these things I use on a daily basis," she said.
Worse yet, what if some of them actually were hers?
The more she looked into plastic, the less she liked it. Plastic is made from fossil fuels.
She worried about chemicals leaching into her food from containers.
Even if she recycled, could she be sure of the recycling company?
Plastic remains fiendishly ubiquitous, permeating our lives. In the first hour of most mornings, I encounter it more than a dozen times - in my toothbrush, water glass, shower curtain, shampoo bottle, yogurt container.
In 2007, the nation, along with some contributions from Mexico and Canada, produced nearly 116 billion pounds of plastic. About 33 percent was packaging.
That same year, about 62 billion pounds entered the municipal waste stream, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That works out to just over 200 pounds for every man, woman and child in the United States. It amounted to 12 percent of the waste stream, up from 1 percent in 1960.
Terry's first two steps, the ones she calls the most significant, were to switch to refillable water bottles and reusable grocery bags.
Alas, no more "cute little plastic containers" for frozen foods, either.
