Plastic Pollution Coalition

Twelve Rs for December

Happy December! Being kind is so easy, and December should be a month of kindness. The Actions for Happiness Calendar is below. Earth kindness is also so important.

During December plastic waste and food waste increases. This December see how you can apply the some of the twelve Rs to reduce your plastic waste footprint. Start by banning all glitter from your home and always bringing your reusable shopping bags.

REMEMBER

REKIND

REDUCE

REUSE

REFUSE

REFILL

REPAIR

REPURPOSE

RETHINK

REGIFT

RESEARCH

RECYCLE

Plastic-Free Presents: Mindful Gifting for Healthier Holidays – YouTube

Another video from Plastic Pollution Coalition:

Kindness creates a ripple, spread it every day, and everyday do something kind for the planet by reducing your plastic consumption!

Glitter is a Microplastic

Tips to use less plastic: https://health4earth.com/2022/02/27/tips-to-use-less-plastic/

7 Sustainable Decor Ideas for the Winter Holidays

Reducing that Pesky Plastic

Weigh your container before you fill with bulk items

Shopping at a grocery store or drug store is one of the most frustrating things I do, everything is packaged in plastic. Luckily, I have some excellent food coops a bus ride away from my house. I save containers and refill them with bulk items. A local meat department in a local grocery store will even refill my containers with meat purchases, which even my coops won’t refill. Science 101 has one of the best articles on reducing plastic that I have ever read, and I learned things from them. Start with a few items to refill. When you get the idea and feel comfortable move to add more plastic-free items. Here is Science 101’s article, on easy ways to reduce plastic. Refilling containers can be fun and satisfying.

Nice screw-top glass bottles that I can reuse forever! Buy products in glass, and reusable glass containers are a win-win!

Only 9 percent of the plastic every produced has been recycled, and no one knows how many hundreds of years it will pollute our environment. It breaks into tiny pieces, ends up in our water sources, is in our food and kills wildlife! Why is plastic harmful? Read here.

Coops will help you get started refilling containers, and I am willing to help if you ask. Let’s all work to reduce our plastic foot-print.

Here are 13 more ways to reduce plastic.

Learn From The Past

I know people get tired of my harping on plastic, but plastic is a serious world problem. According to the Plastic Pollution Coalition the average shopper uses 500 plastic bags a year, and that is just bags, not all the other plastic products. This is not sustainable!

I love thinking of how my grandparents lived, and how it is different from today. I loved this post from One Green Planet about what we can learn from the past and from our grandparents. Read it here.

Below is a quote from One Green Planet which show how serious this plastic issue is!

“In the past 30 years alone, the amount of plastic produced worldwide has increased by 620 percent! On average, that equates to 300 million tons of plastic a year. Of this 300 million tons, about 8.8 million tons find their way into the world’s oceans where they are left to slowly photodegrade into smaller pieces – and by slowly, we mean over the course of 100 to 1,000 years. When you consider the huge volume that is added to the oceans every year and the fact that plastics never really “go away,” we find our oceans crowded with a massive soupy mixture of harmful plastic products. This sadly has a massive impact on the marine animals who call our oceans home. Around 700 marine species are in danger of extinction due to entanglement, ingestion or general pollution caused by our plastic trash.”

Our grandparents didn’t have the choices and variety we do. They cooked and ate hearty food on real dishes, but most important they conserved, reused, and didn’t throw everything away like we do today! I would stay with my grand parents for a week and we didn’t need to run to the store to buy buy buy. We used what we had.

What do you remember about how your grandparents did things?

Even remote islands are collecting our plastic trash

http://www.refillrevolution.com/

https://health4earth.com/2017/02/19/the-horrifying-impact-of-plastic-pollution/

Earth Day Resolution

Jeff Bridges On Single-Use Plastic

Is this the way we want our lakes, streams and oceans to look?

Jeff Bridges has taken on plastic waste and has an excellent video and list of ways to reduce your plastic pollution. See his video here.

Here are 10 easy ways to reduce your plastic footprint:

Bring your own shopping bag to the grocery store

Stop buying bottled water – Use a reusable bottle instead

Say no to straws

Stop using disposable razors – Buy one with a replaceable cartridge

Ditch the plastic baggies – Wax paper and mason jars work wonders in the kitchen

Avoid using plastic utensils – Bring your own fork when you eat out

Choose glass over plastic

Buy the powdered version – Liquid versions of soaps and detergents tend to come in plastic bottles, powdered products come in cardboard boxes

Cut out the BPA – If a plastic bottle has a 3,7 or PC sign, it contains the most toxic types of plastic

Follow #RefusePlastic on social media for more ideas and to join the conversation

http://www.startribune.com/is-plastic-permanent-well-it-s-our-legacy-at-least/375907301/

This is an argument against Jeff Bridges video. Fish, birds, other wildlife, our oceans and all of us are being harmed by plastic. The below argument is very weak:

http://www.startribune.com/politifact-is-plastic-permanent-no-it-goes-away-sooner-or-later/375907261/

Never use baggies again:

http://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/ Plastic is a substance the earth cannot digest!

Single-Use is Ocean Abuse

Below is from Plastic Pollution Coalition: http://plasticpollutioncoalition.org/

Take The Pledge to Use Less Plastic Every Day http://actnow.surfrider.org/app/sign-petition?0&engagementId=58936

Change Begins Onshore

Plastic lasts forever… our oceans are turning into plastic soup.

It doesn’t biodegrade and no naturally occurring organisms can break it down. Plastic photodegrades, which means that sunlight breaks it down into smaller and smaller pieces. Those small pieces drift in the ocean and are mistaken for food by fish and birds.

It is undisputable that plastic pollution is killing marine life through ingestion and entanglement in plastic marine litter.

Up to 80% of the plastic in our oceans comes from the land – us. Single-use is ocean abuse. So, make a pledge today to make these simple 5 changes, which will have a huge impact on our oceans health:

1) Use cloth shopping bags. For each reusable bag you use, it’s estimated that another 400 plastic bags will be kept from being used.
2) Forget bottled water and carry a reusable canteen. Every reusable water bottle will keep another 167 plastic bottles from entering the environment.
3) Bring a reusable mug when you go to your local coffee shop.
4) Skip the straw, which are one of the top 10 items found on beaches.
5) And, of course, Recycle!

TAKE THE PLEDGE: COMMIT to Rising Above Plastics! http://actnow.surfrider.org/app/sign-petition?0&engagementId=58936

http://www.organicgardening.com/living/5-key-strategies-plastic-free-life

http://blog.oceanconservancy.org/2015/02/13/trashing-the-ocean-new-study-provides-first-estimate-of-how-much-plastic-flows-into-the-ocean/

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/great-pacific-garbage-patch-is-destroying-the-oceans/