This constant barrage poses a serious danger to marine life. Animals can get tangled up in this trash or ingest it—either because they mistake it as prey or because the plastic has been broken down into tiny particles by seawater. They feel nice and reduce your waste and use of plastic trash bags. Buy bulk coffee packaged in paper or in cans, or bring your own bags. Chewing gum not only comes in a lot of plastic packaging — the gum itself is mostly plastic and adds up to 100,000 tons of pollution every year, according to UK charityJust One Ocean. Luckily, there are brands making plastic-free gum, so you don’t have to drop the habit altogether.
Because plastic isn’t biodegradable, every piece of plastic ever made is still on this planet. Whether it breaks down into microplastics or not, plastic that is either dumped or washed into the oceans are consumed by marine animals. Unfortunately, I don’t like vegetables and the alternative option for meat such as quorn and soy are quite expensive and come in small plastic containers. And I do sometimes question if organic is always better – if I buy conventional, locally grown food I don’t see that being much worse for the environment than organic produce which travels from overseas to get here.
Let’s do our part by stopping the use of “Styrofoam” and other harmful products because we want our children to grow up with the same beauty that past generations have seen”. Eco Island Packaging from Antigua makes food containers out of 100% biodegradeable, unbleached and locally sourced sugarcane. The team behind POTATO PLASTIC keeps experimenting with this interesting biodegradable material which decomposes in around two months. The Swedish start-up POTATO PLASTIC creates a plastic-like material out of potato waste. Her current research into sustainable materials has brought material innovations, such as Aqua Faba and COCOA, which can be found in Material Libraries.
One of the key places where billions of people interact with plastic on a daily basis is their local supermarket. Read more about buy instagram followers here. Greenpeace has more than a decade of experience evaluating U.S. retailers on seafood sustainability. And while more recent Greenpeace evaluations have increasingly focused on single-use plastics, this report is the first of its kind to evaluate how major U.S. retailers are working to address the global plastic pollution crisis. Single-use plastics, such as plastic bags, wraps, and films, are incredibly energy-intensive to produce.
Plastic has an undoubtedly convenient but worrying presence in our lives. Everyday items such as wrappers, bottles and even chewing gum (yes, it’s made of plastic!) are thrown away without much thought. In fact, Americans discard 14.4 million tons of plastic a year, and only 13 percent of it is recycled. With all of the benefits of reducing plastic waste, you might want to know some simple steps you can take today to create a healthier environment and save money. This is especially true for businesses as they often purchase products in bulk.
Much of this plastic will end up in landfills and oceans just like it does today. At The Estée Lauder Companies, citizenship and sustainability are embedded at the core of our business. We know that plastic is among the most pressing sustainability issues today and we are committed to tackling virgin plastic use and working to minimize plastic waste. Pew Charitable Trusts released a groundbreaking study, Breaking the Plastic Wave , concluding that if all current industry and government commitments were met, ocean plastic deposition would be reduced by only 7%. Without immediate and sustained new commitments throughout the plastics value chain, annual flows of plastics into oceans could nearly triple by 2040. We gratefully acknowledge the input from current and former Earthwatch Europe colleagues and external experts to assign percentage weights to the criteria used to rank plastic reduction actions.
Opt for products with natural exfoliants, like oatmeal or salt, instead. Clothing is a major source of microplastic pollution, according to Plastic Pollution Coalition. Materials like polyester, nylon, acrylic, and other synthetic fibers are all types of plastic and are present in about 60% of clothing made today.
As a traveler, you probably won’t know the ins-and-outs of waste-disposal in the country, so the best thing you can do is reduce your use of harmful plastics. Over the past year, we’ve gathered almost 80,000 petition signatures from Whole Foods shoppers who care about their health and the environment and want the store to eliminate single-use plastic packaging. Here’s 10 steps that Whole Foods should take – many of which have already been taken by other retailers – to be more sustainable and ultimately be an industry leader once again. For the second year in a row, Whole Foods received a failing grade in As You Sow’s corporate plastic pollution scorecard. Last year, we called on Whole Foods to reduce single-use plastic, increase reusable or refillable packaging and increase transparency on the company’s plastic use.
The world’s production of virgin plastic has grown by about 4% a year since 2000, as we use more and more of it in our daily lives, Geyer’s research found. If we continue on the same path, by 2030, our plastic production is expected to double, leading to more trouble for overflowing landfills and oceans — and to increased use of petrochemicals required to manufacture it. In 2018, the world produced 359 million tons of plastic, 357 million tons more than produced in 1950.
