Happy fall! After such a hot summer many are welcoming the cooler days, but not the shorter daylight. I love this post from the Carbon Almanac. Many are talking about working on a climate goal for the new season. I recommend using less single use plastic.
Today is the equinox when the sun crosses the equator and day and night are approximately equal in length. It happens twice a year, in March and September, and marks a transition from one season to the next season.
It can be a good time to think about what you want to transition to (or away from). Is there a change you have been wanting to make?
In the context of helping our planet, that could be setting up a regular walk with friends to talk about ideas, donating an hour to an environmental group, reading about your local government policies on climate adaptation or eating less meat one night a week.
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.
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.
On July 24, we had used all the resources that the Earth can generate in a year. We are using more resources than we can replace, or living on borrowed time. The day we want to reach is December 31.
How can we use ;ess resources
From the Carbon Almanac. On July 24 we hit Earth Overshoot Day for 2025. Earth Overshoot Day is noted every year and the date is announced on World Environment Day. It marks the day when “humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services … exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year”. Global Footprint Network, a research organization focused on the operation of the human economy within the Earth’s ecological limits, hosts and calculates when Earth Overshoot Day will occur, with this year showing that humanity is using the planet’s resources 80% faster than ecosystems can regenerate. July 24 is the earliest in the year that Earth Overshoot Day has fallen, with past dates going back to 1971. In those 54 years, humanity reached its overshoot day on December 31 once, in 1972.
Calculations for overshoot day are based on the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, and this year’s calculations revealed that due to the ocean’s reduced capacity to store carbon, an increase in per capita Footprint and a reduced per capita biocapacity, Earth Overshoot Day fell eight days earlier than it did in 2024. In addition to Earth Overshoot Day, Country Overshoot Days are also calculated each year, seen here. These dates represent when the planet’s ecological resource budget would be used up if every place on Earth consumed at the same level as residents in that particular country.
A campaign working to reduce the strain on the Earth’s resources and bring humanity’s consumption into better balance is #MoveTheDate. The goal is to move the date of Earth Overshoot Day to December 31 or later every year, ensuring that the resources taken from the planet can be sustainability regenerated by the ecosystems. Solutions range across five major areas: planet, cities, energy, food and population. This solutions map tracks solutions being implemented across the world. Check it out to see if there are any near you.
Visit the Earth Overshoot Day website to learn more about how it is calculated, as well as the economic and ecological implications of humanity’s continued overuse of resources.
My Five things you can do:
Strive for zero waste–Reuse, Reuse, Reuse and Refuse!
Drive Less
Reduce your plastic footprint–No single use plastic!
Plant native plants and raingardens without chemicals!
We are in a climate crisis, a waste crisis, and a plastic crisis. The last thing we need is for people to purchase more landfill junk. Everyone has a right to clean water and clean air. Buying less stuff, and producing less waste helps keep our water and air clean.
Purchase items of quality and things you really need this holiday. Also, become aware of the plastic that you send to the landfill.
Zero Waste is moving from our throw-away and overconsumption culture to a more sustainable way of reusing and refusing.
Food waste in landfills produces harmful methane gas.
The EPA reports that garbage increases 25% between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Here are new ways to reduce your waste.
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.
