Have you ever looked at the amount of plastic waste you or your family produce in a day? Can you imagine where that ends up, how much of it will not decompose? What do you think you can do to change this?
Wednesdays are our crazy after school activity day where I have separate activities for the kids in different places. Clothes changes, snacks and homework are done sitting in car parks then once their activities are over, my daughter sleeps at my dads which means an extra change of clothes. I refer to my car the next day as being hit by the Wednesday wardrobe. It was on one of these Thursday mornings that I realised how much plastic we had been using. I thought I was pretty good – the kids use glass drink bottles for school and we use fabric shopping bags (no I don’t remember them every time!) or have our groceries delivered in a cardboard box but still I had load of plastic water bottles, a couple of take away coffee cups and the odd plastic lunch bag for the kids snacks. All that waste just for one day! What was I doing?? Since that time I made a more conscious effort to eliminate our households use of plastic.
So what changes can you make? A few simple tips –
Buy in bulk – less packaging
Avoid prepackaged fruit and vegetables in the supermarket
Wash up instead of using plastic plates, knives and forks
Keep cups for take away coffee or tea
Swap buying water bottle to glass or steel portable water bottles
No more plastic lunch wraps or glad wrap – swap for lunch containers or paper bags
Avoid pre packaged foods
No plastic bags – use fabric bags
Make your own snacks – less waste.
Swap plastic containers for glass jars and reuse.
Less plastic toys for kids (especially ones with batteries that are alos detrimental to our environment)
This is for the asian island travellers – do not release those beautiful plastic lights into the night sky. They have to come down eventually
It’s really time to get serious about it. Our environment is suffering, it has been for a while now. The more our population grows the more we have the responsibility to be conscious of the waste we are producing and what we can do to reduce it. We are lucky enough to live in a country where we are not extremely over crowded and most of our waste is conveniently taken away on a weekly basis. Out of sight shouldn’t mean out of mind. If you visit countries that are over populated and waste management isn’t controlled, you only need to go to a local water way or beach to see the overwhelming impact that plastic has.
Dont’ you want in the future to show your grand kids photos of our beautiful world, with our beautiful oceans and marine life and say this is an image of what it is…not what it was.
Image sourced: www.grist.org
Imaged sourced: www.plasticfreejuly.org
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