Refill your own container with bulk items. It reduces plastic and I think it saves you money, too!
Join the #5DayChallenge to reuse. World Refill Day is June 16, but let’s make reuse a habit all week long and beyond.
Choose a new reusable plastic-free swap each day or stick with one that works for you. Whether it’s refilling your coffee cup, reusing containers for takeaway food, or shopping packaging-free options—every swap counts.
What is World Refill Day? World Refill Day is a global awareness day spearheaded by City to Sea, an award-winning UK-based environmental charity working to stop plastic pollution at source. The day asks individuals, businesses, and policymakers to choose reuse over single-use, whether that means refilling a water bottle, bringing a reusable cup to the coffee shop, or shopping at a packaging-free store. It sits alongside the Refill app, which now lists hundreds of thousands of free water refill points across more than 30 countries.
But FIFA just decided late last week to no longer allow any reusable water bottles at World Cup stadiums, so sports fans can’t beat the heat without resorting to wasteful disposable plastic bottles.1
Access to water is critical to fans’ comfort and safety — especially in sweltering summer weather. And spectators should be able to stay hydrated without producing plastic waste that will stick around as pollution for centuries.
FIFA had originally said that some types of reusable bottles would be allowed, before suddenly reversing course.2
It’s a move that will only create more plastic trash at a time when plastic pollution is already out of control. Every 16 hours, Americans throw out enough plastic to fill a sports stadium up to the brim.3
Every disposable plastic bottle we use and toss has the potential to pollute our environment and even threaten our health.
A lot of the plastic we throw away ends up in landfills, where it can break down into tiny, polluting particles and leach harmful chemicals into our soil and water.4
And some is incinerated — a process that emits toxic chemicals into the air. Air pollution from burning plastic can emit chemicals known to cause cancer, reproductive harm, birth defects and other health problems.5
Why pollute our world and risk our health with disposable plastic bottles, when a reusable solution is right in front of us?
Allowing reusable water bottles in stadiums is the right thing to do. Add your name and ask FIFA to allow reusable bottles.
Some sports stadiums have already demonstrated that allowing fans to bring their own reusable bottles is a safe, simple way to prevent pollution.
Every World Cup spectator should be able to do the same.
1. Scott Thompson, “FIFA bans refillable water bottles from World Cup stadiums despite original rules stating otherwise,” Fox News, June 4, 2026. 2. Scott Thompson, “FIFA bans refillable water bottles from World Cup stadiums despite original rules stating otherwise,” Fox News, June 4, 2026. 3. Celeste Meiffren-Swango and James Horrox, “Trash in America,” PIRG, December 9, 2025. 4. “Plastic planet: How tiny plastic particles are polluting our soil,” United Nations Environment Programme, last accessed April 28, 2026. 5. Celeste Meiffren-Swango, James Horrox, Grace Vickers & Carol Li, “”Chemical recycling”: What you need to know,” PIRG, July 14, 2025.
Today we celebrate our oceans, which are vital to the health of our planet.
Make it a plastic-free day.
Our oceans are warming at a staggering rate which has an effect on our weather and the health of our planet. Besides making it plastic-free decide how you can reduce your fossil fuels use by driving less and using less energy it your home!
Our oceans need protection!
Below is from the Carbon Almanac:
In December 2022, governments around the world agreed to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. Now just over three years later, 10% of the ocean is officially protected. To meet the 2030 goal, an area the size of the Indian Ocean still needs to come under protection.
With a big step towards the 2030 goal, Papua New Guinea recently established the 200,000 sq. km Western Manus Marine Protected Area which is the largest the country has designated to date.
As we think about our waters, visit the World Ocean Day website for more information on the role they play and how to take action.
Below is from the Plastic Pollution Coalition: Plastic “recycling” is a false solution to plastic pollution. How do we know this? Since the 1970s, businesses making and selling plastic, governments, and some organizations have overwhelmingly told the public that it is essential to recycle plastic. Recycling messages have been communicated to us across all types of media and in many different ways: in advertising campaigns, imprinted recycling symbols on plastic products, and much more. Yet, despite this major push for recycling plastic, plastic pollution and its toxic impacts continue to grow. There is plenty of evidence that plastic recycling is not only failing to live up to its promises, it is also making plastic pollution worse. In contrast, by focusing on plastic-free reuse, we can tap into a solution that ends wastefulness at the source.
Recycled Plastics Are Toxic
How can an activity we’ve been told is right actually be wrong? Turns out, plastics were never designed to be recycled. “The future of plastic is in the trash can,” one packaging industry executive said at a plastic industry meeting in 1956—not in the recycling bin. In other words, plastic was designed to be wasted, despite the heavy toll that its full existence—from the extraction of fossil fuels to plastic’s eventual disposal in landfills, incinerators, or the environment—has on people and the planet.
Plastics are Not “Circular”
Today, the plastic and fossil fuel industries continue to perpetuate the myth that plastics are recyclable by promoting the idea of “plastics circularity”—that plastics can somehow be reused endlessly without creating harmful costs. But this idea is false: Plastic recycling as it is today is harmful and cannot be considered “circular,” because plastic recycling processes continue to drive plastic pollution and its dangerous and toxic impacts—including the climate crisis, environmental injustice, chemical pollution, and more. And while we may need to engage in some kinds of recycling of the less toxic plastics we already have in order to mitigate plastic pollution, recycling on its own cannot be seen as the sole solution to plastic pollution. Instead, recycling must be coupled with a drastic reduction in plastic production in order to be more helpful than harmful.
“Recycled” Plastics are Actually Downcycled
Additionally, even when plastics are recycled, they are most often “downcycled,” or made into items of lesser value and quality (like turning plastic water bottles into plastic fleece jackets or carpet fiber), and continue to cause considerable pollution. When collected for traditional “mechanical” recycling, plastics must be sorted by color and type, washed, and shredded up. These processes burn large amounts of fossil fuel energy–emitting chemicals and greenhouse gases, waste and contaminate water, and create microplastics and nanoplastics. The small plastic particles are then melted down, and manufacturers must mix in a large amount of newly made (virgin) plastic and/or toxic additives to restore some of its useful properties. Recycling increases the toxicity of plastic; there are hundreds of additional toxic chemicals, including pesticides and pharmaceuticals, in recycled plastic. And that’s in addition to the mix of more than 16,000 chemicals in newly made plastic.
“Recycled” Plastic is Not Suitable for Food and Beverage Packaging
The toxicity of plastic and recycled plastic presents serious dangers to the environment and public health, and drives environmental injustices. Research has indicated that recycled plastic is not suitable for many uses, particularly when it comes to packaging of food and beverages, as it contains a wide range of dangerous chemicals. Drink bottles made of recycled plastic are even more contaminated than drink bottles made of virgin (new) plastic, and these chemicals easily leach into the beverages they contain.
Plastics Create Environmental Injustice
Today, most plastic that is discarded as “waste” is never recycled. The global waste industry is more likely to landfill, incinerate, or ship plastic—often to the Global South—where plastic is dumped and sometimes open-burned, driving pollution and injustice as waste colonialism. Meanwhile, these industries only continue to increase plastic production, worsening plastic pollution.
Communities near plastic recycling sorting centers, often called materials recovery facilities (MRFs), and recycling plants are often the most underserved, and face increased risks to their health. People who find employment by picking through plastic pollution as part of the informal waste sector, who often live in the Global South, face serious health hazards and poor working conditions. Plastic recycling infrastructure and activities can cause polluted air, soil, and drinking water; bring constant truck, train, or barge traffic as well as scavenger animals who are attracted to eating waste; and there are often fires or intake of radioactive and other hazardous materials.
We need to do more to protect our beautiful planet!
Mother Earth, we love you.
Our Earth is so beautiful, especially in May! On Mother’s day we should be thankful for our mothers’, but also for our Mother Earth
Mother Earth is clearly urging a call to action. Nature is suffering. Oceans filling with plastic and turning more acidic. Extreme heat, wildfires and floods, have affected millions of people. If we all do one thing like stop idling our cars or driving less, we can make a difference!
There are so many wars going on. We need to stop all this destruction which has such a negative effect of people and planet!
Climate change, man-made changes to nature as well as crimes that disrupt biodiversity, such as deforestation, land-use change, intensified agriculture and livestock production or the growing illegal wildlife trade, can accelerate the speed of destruction of the planet.
Everyone needs to play a part in protecting our planet. We need to buy less plastic junk, we need to drive less, and plant native plants. We need to expose ourselves and our Earth to less harmful chemicals. These things protect our health and the health of our planet. Protecting clean water and clean air need to be priorities. Everything else relates to that!
Plant bee balm, purple cone flowers, blazing star and rudbeckia. They attract pollinators and need no chemicals!
This is from the Story of Stuff. I hope you will give it some thought and make thoughtful purchases for the holidays and all year. “This time of year, the pressure to buy more — and waste more — is everywhere. Black Friday doorbusters, holiday flash sales, limited-time offers: overconsumption during the holidays isn’t an accident. It’s by design.
And the consequences are massive. Americans generate 25% more waste between Thanksgiving and New Year’s — an extra one million tons of trash every week. From impulse purchases tossed by January, to mountains of packaging, the holiday season has become a pipeline of extraction, production, shipping, and disposal.
What we rarely see are the impacts hidden upstream. Most of a product’s environmental footprint happens long before it reaches your door — through rapid mining of raw materials, energy-intensive manufacturing, and global shipping emissions that fuel the climate crisis.
Fast fashion hauls and holiday overbuying only accelerate the damage. Every second, a garbage truck’s worth of clothing is landfilled or burned. Electronics, toys, gadgets, and seasonal “stuff” flood into toxic e-waste dumps around the world.” Story of Stuff
Trying to be more climate friendly with gift giving this year? This holiday gifting guide will help you get in the spirit while saving you money and deepening the meaningfulness of your holiday season.
I found this so interesting from the New York Times. All this processed food has also led to the explosion of plastic packaging. Plastic and processed food are full of chemicals. Chemicals we don’t want in our bodies or in our environment.
Ultraprocessed nation
Humans have been processing food for millenniums. Hunter-gatherers ground wild wheat to make bread; factory workers canned fruit for soldiers during the Civil War.
But in the late 1800s, food companies began concocting products that were wildly different from anything people could make themselves. Coca-Cola came in 1886, Jell-O in 1897, and Crisco in 1911. Spam, Velveeta, Kraft Mac & Cheese and Oreos arrived in the decades that followed. Foods like these often promised ease and convenience. Some of them filled the bellies of soldiers in World War II.
Eventually, these products overtook grocery shelves and American diets. Now they are among the greatest health threats of our time. How did we get here? Today’s newsletter is a tour through food history.
Wartime innovation
During World War II, shelf-stable foods were developed to feed soldiers.
During World War II, companies devised shelf-stable foods for soldiers — powdered cheeses, dehydrated potatoes, canned meats and melt-resistant chocolate bars. They infused new additives like preservatives, flavorings and vitamins. And they packaged the foods in novel ways to withstand wet beach landings and days at the bottom of a rucksack.
After the war, food companies realized that they could adapt this foxhole cuisine into profitable convenience foods for the masses. Advertisements told homemakers that these products offered superior nutrition and could save them time in the kitchen. Wonder Bread commercials from the 1950s, for instance, claimed its vitamins and minerals would help children “grow bigger and stronger.” An ad for Swift’s canned hamburgers boasted that they were “out of the can and onto the bun” in minutes.
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More women found work outside the home, and by the mid-1970s, they spent much less time cooking. But they were still expected to feed their families. Fish sticks, frozen waffles and TV dinners filled modern freezers, and convenience foods became more popular. These products weren’t all ultraprocessed — some were just whole foods that had been frozen or canned with a simple ingredient, like salt. Still, people got used to the idea that packaged goods could replace cooking from scratch.
An explosion
By the 1970s, innovations in fertilizer, pesticide and crop development, along with farm subsidies, led to a glut of grain. Companies turned it into ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and modified starch to fill sugary cereals, sodas and fast foods.
In the 1980s, investors wanted food manufacturers to show larger profits, so they developed thousands of new drinks and snacks and marketed them aggressively. (Have a look at how the ads changed over the last century.)
The tobacco companies Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds diversified into the food industry, dominating it through the early 2000s. They applied the same marketing techniques that they crafted to sell cigarettes — targeting children and certain racial and ethnic groups. Kraft, owned by Philip Morris, created Kool-Aid flavors for the Hispanic market and handed out coupons and samples at cultural events for Black Americans.
Obesity tripled in children and doubled in adults between the mid-1970s and the early 2000s.
A health crisis
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By the 21st century, you couldn’t walk through a school cafeteria, a supermarket or an airport without being inundated by ultraprocessed foods. Obesity kept rising, and food companies addressed it by making products they marketed as “healthier,” like low-carb breakfast cereals, shakes and bagels; artificially sweetened ice creams and yogurts; and snacks like Oreos and Doritos in smaller, 100-calorie packs.
They were popular, but they did not make us healthier. Scientists soon linked ultraprocessed foods to Type 2 diabetes, cognitive decline and cardiovascular disease. For generations, obesity had been seen as a problem of willpower — caused by eating too much and exercising too little. But in the last decade, research on ultraprocessed foods has challenged that notion, suggesting that these foods may drive us to eat more.
Today, scientists, influencers, advocates and politicians publicly condemn ultraprocessed foods, which represent about 70 percent of the U.S. food supply. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls them “poison.”
Are we at a tipping point? Maybe. There are signs that people are eating slightly fewer of these foods. But our reliance on ultraprocessed food was “decades in the making,” one expert told me, and “could take decades to reverse.”
We all need to examine the amount of plastic we purchase, and figure how we can reduce the plastic we are exposed to and disperse into our environment.
Plastic is harming our health and our environment.
By Mary Koseth and Katelynn Rolfes
From the Minnesota Reformer
Microplastics have become a significant environmental concern across the world due to their widespread presence in various ecosystems, potential harm to wildlife and marine life, and the uncertainty surrounding their long-term effects on human health.
This summer, concerned citizens across Minnesota worked with staff from Environment Minnesota Research & Policy Center to test 40 Minnesota lakes for microplastics.
When we analyzed the water samples the results were clear: No Minnesota lake is safe from microplastics.
The report presents the test results, from the northern coast of Lake Superior to the wouthwest corner Minnesota, and includes recommendations to tackle the problem. In our citizen-science research project, the 40 samples were filtered using a funnel, flask and filters which had a pore size of 0.45 microns. The goal was to capture any tiny bits of plastic that were tough to spot with only our eyes. The types of plastic we searched for were microfibers, films, fragments and microbeads. We found all of these types save for microbeads, commonly found in beauty products prior to their banning in 2015.
The results of this survey should set off alarm bells for Minnesotans who love our lakes. Minnesota’s waterways are a source of peace for people, a critical habitat for wildlife, and part of our state’s identity.
Our report underscores that microplastic pollution is not an “over there” problem. It’s a “right here” problem that none of us can afford to ignore. But fortunately for us, this isn’t a hopeless situation, and there are many ways we can take action. As individuals, as community members, as whole nations, we can uphold human and environmental health and justice with our creative ideas and bold visions. Everyone has something to offer. When it comes to microplastic pollution, it’s all hands on deck.
The report outlines a broad range of various ways to tackle the problem. These include fighting fast fashion and excess textile waste, and changing Minnesota law to allow local governments to restrict single-use plastics like plastic bags.
We need to take a lot of steps to protect our lakes and health from microplastic pollution, but to start, we need to move away from single use plastics. Nothing we use for a few minutes should be able to pollute our environment for hundreds of years.
I wanted to share an invite to Zero Waste Fest on Saturday, October 11 at Burroughs Community School in Minneapolis. It’s a free, all-day community event with panels, food, music, kid’s activities, and lots of hands-on ways to get involved in building a future without waste. Zero Waste Fest — MN Zero Waste Coalition
The day runs from 10am to 4pm and includes:
Inspiring panels on:
Building a Zero Waste Future in Minnesota
Plastic is a Justice Issue: Fighting Pollution from Production to Disposal
From Throwaway to Reuse: Reclaiming Culture, Creating Systems
Tabling from organizations around MN supporting zero waste
Clothing swaps and mending
Food, art, and music!
It’s free and open to everyone. I’d love for you to join us and help spread the word!
#5DayChallenge to reuse.
Choose a new reusable plastic-free swap each day or stick with one that works for you. Whether it’s refilling your coffee cup, reusing containers for takeaway food, or shopping packaging-free options—every swap counts.
Bring your own metal fork from home so that you can skip plastic utensils.
Say no to receipts (BPA).
When it comes to leftovers, store food in glass, ceramics, or stainless steel foodware.
Shop naked. Buy produce that isn’t wrapped in plastic.
Don’t forget your reusable bag so that you can skip single-use plastic bags.
Health4earth 