Plastic Free July

Every year in July we celebrate reducing our reliance on plastics and going plastic free. 

A single choice to choose plastic alternatives can bring about a much-needed change to our environmental health. A single person’s actions can be the spark of change that ignites a whole movement.  If one individual switching to a reusable water bottle can spare hundreds of plastic bottles from damaging the environment, imagine what a whole group of environmentally conscious people can accomplish.   

There are so many options to plastic that are now available on the market.  Instead of purchasing shampoo and conditioner in a plastic bottle that may not be recyclable you are now able to purchase bar shampoo and conditioner. Instead of purchasing toothpaste in a plastic tube you are now able to purchase toothpaste tablets that you chew and brush with.  When it comes to doing laundry, they now offer bottle free options, with new laundry detergent sheets that dissolve in the water completely and are eco-friendly, hypoallergenic, and biodegradable and come in packaging that is able to be recycled or composted.  

These alternatives are just a few examples of the vast products that are now widely available to consumers.  

• Leave reusable bags in your car for your grocery trips. 

• Avoid plastic take out containers by cooking at home. 

• Buy in bulk and reduce/eliminate individually wrapped product purchases, such as snack packs. 

• When making online purchases skip the express delivery or opt to group your package deliveries on the same day. 

• Instead of saving food with plastic wrap use a reusable container or by using beeswax paper. 

• Buy a reusable straw, whether metal or bamboo and carry it with you, this can also apply to utensils and chopsticks. 

Single use plastics are items that are created using fossil fuels with the intention of being discarded after one use.  They are most commonly found in the packaging and service industries. Plastic was invented in the 19th century by Alexander Parkes, who introduced the world’s first ever man-made plastic material made of cellulose at the London International Exhibition.  This was known as Parkesine.  It was not until 1907 that Dr. Leo Bakeland created the world’s first synthetic plastic material known as Bakelite.  In 1920 Hermann Staudinger proved the existence of polymers.  Polymers – a chemical compound that consists of repeating structural units. It can be used to describe plastic and various naturally occurring organic compounds including DNA.   

During World War II new types of plastic were being created and the plastic market started to boom in the 1950s and 1960s.  During the 1970s consumers realized just how bad the toxic chemicals being used to create plastic actually were.  This along with the release of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962 eventually paved the way for the first Earth Day held on April 22, 1970.  This environmental movement and the oil embargoes that were happening at the time, pushed companies and consumers towards biobased and biodegradable plastics. However, at the time, bioplastics failed to live up to the expectations of consumers. Today, these biobased and biodegradable plastic products are more durable, readily available, and able to be composted at commercial composting facilities.

How Can We Reduce Our Impact?

By prioritizing reusable products over single use plastics we are immediately improving our environmental health and being cost effective. Turning single use products into multiuse products could be another way to help your carbon footprint and our environmental health.  Many single use plastic items are just so convenient, that we as a consumer, no longer think about the impact that it poses to our environmental health. 

Let’s imagine we are out and get thirsty, you make your way over to a vending machine and purchase a cold beverage. Once you finish drinking it, you immediately dispose of it, you maybe even recycle it.  However, that was still a single use plastic.  Since it was used one time, energy, time and money are now spent to make another one to replace this one that was just discarded.  Another example of single use plastics is the plastic silverware that is provided with your take out dinner. After you have finished your meal the plastic silverware makes its way to the trash bin.  When these items cannot  be avoided you can mitigate their environmental impact by reusing them instead of immediately disposing of them.  This can be done with single-use plastic bags, bottles, cups, plastic silverware, and by reusing/repurposing take out containers.  Another example of this would be when you purchase produce in the grocery store.  You fill a produce bag and when you get home you dispose of it.  If you instead collect the plastic bags from your grocery trip you can take them to recycling posts at your local grocery store and they will recycle those plastic bags for you.  They do this by taking the bags to a local recycling center, shredding them down, cleaning them and making them into plastic pellets that can be used to make recycled plastic items including: plastic furniture, flower pots, fencing and other plastic materials.   

Another way to reduce environmental impacts as a consumer is to look for products that are locally sourced and avoid freight or air transported goods.