We are fast approaching Earth Day, a global event that brings millions of people together for what is the largest civic-focused day of action in the world.
This Sunday 22nd of April, Earth Day will mobilise the world to End Plastic Pollution in the effort to eliminate single-use plastic and to raise awareness on health and other risks associated with the use and disposal of plastics.
The problem has massive proportions. 300 million tons of plastic are sold each year and 90% of that is thrown away. A huge percentage of those plastics end up in our landfills, our oceans, our wildlife and our bodies. As plastic breaks down in our environment it can mimic human hormones and is linked to everything from breast cancer to early puberty.
But we can all do our part as individuals, communities and organisations to ensure that steps are taken on the right direction.
We have put together 3 tips to help reduce plastic use in our everyday life.
1) Use Refillable Water Bottles
Did you know that the average Londoner uses 175 plastic bottles a year? If that sounds a lot to you too, we can all instead use refillable ones and enjoy our water whenever we are with less cost for the environment. There are wonderful initiatives out there like REFILL that makes refilling our bottles easier by introducing refill stations in cafes, bars and shops.
2) Use Reusable Coffee Cups
We all like our coffee, but using reusable coffee cups would make the world a better place and in a year you can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 92% compared to disposables.
3) Bring Your Own Shopping Bags
A plastic bag can take from 15 to 1,000 years to break down, depending on the environment. That's a long time, right? If you think that we go shopping at least once a week that adds up to a lot of plastic. We can choose our own favourite reusable bag, with the colours or the quotes we like and use it over and over again. One person using reusable bags over their lifetime would remove more than 22,000 plastic bags from the environment!
It is important that we all do our part in our daily lives and that we put pressure on our governments to ban single use plastics and non-recyclable products.
If you want to know how much plastic you currently consume and want to make a plan to consume less you can use the Plastic Pollution Calculator and Planner by the Earth Day Network.
(Photo by Mali Maeder from Pexels)
