How can we reduce plastic consumption
3 August 2021 Estimated time: ~1 min.
Plastic is not fantastic! How to give plastic a vacantion for a green August!
Invented in 1907, plastic had a huge period of glory, but we all know that the planet is suffocated by bottles, bags and other packaging made of this type of material with an unjustly long lifespan.
Plastic causes huge problems in the environment by suffocating forests, waters and especially animals, and its disastrous effects captured in photos shock us. Of course, we might think that individual effort is insufficient, but combined, seven billion individual efforts could lead to huge changes for the better in terms of anti-pollution.
Goodbye plastic bottles!
A first and important step would be to replace the plastic bottles, those popular PETs that we throw away as soon as we finish drinking water, juice or milk. Their place could be taken by the glass ones, which we can reuse. For example, in such bottles, depending on their shape, we can keep tomato juice for the winter, various types of fruit compotes, natural juices. Housewives certainly know these tricks!
Cloth bag, no plastic bags!
In the old days, when plastic bags were free, a person would get dozens of such packages while shopping. For some time, they have been for a fee, but today the price is not so high as to discourage their purchase. Thus, we could be helping the environment by using cloth bags, those that were indispensable to our mothers and grandmothers. They are chic, cute, durable and thus save money, not only good for the planet!
Refuse plastic straws and disposable cutlery!
You might think that a straw involves a small amount of plastic and therefore does not do much harm! Wrong! Think of billions of straws being collected every day, imagine mountains of such seemingly mundane and harmless objects thrown into the woods or the sea and dolphins trying to swim among them! So next time you will prefer reusable straw or paper straw, which degrades much faster?
So are disposable cutlery! You can help eliminate them by keeping stainless steel cutlery and ceramic or reusable plates at the office, which you can use for lunch. And even at the family picnic. There are so many nice options to put in your travel bag, we don’t have to resort to the old plates, forks and thin plastic knives, which we should throw away at the end of the day!
Use a reusable cup of coffee!
My cup plus your cup plus the platic cups of the friends we go out with, all together they also form dozens of plastic packaging, and the dozens turn, gathered in a year, into huge quantities – billions! If we used ceramic cups, paper cups or reusable glasses we could avoid this disaster, and nature would be cleaner and more welcoming, in the long run, with us!
