These are so obvious and straightforward, yet most of us fail to avoid the convenience-trap.
This month I personally pledged to following through on all 4 of these. I hope you will too 🙂
- Eliminate single use plastic bottled water from your life.
Sound obvious?
“More than 8 million tons of plastic are dumped in our oceans every year.” – plastic oceans.org
Another fun fact – It is estimated that 3 liters of water is used to package 1 liter of bottled water.
2. Adopt a Coffee Mug
Get this- “If you buy just one cup of coffee or tea in a disposable cup every day, you’ll create about 23lbs (10.5 kgs) of waste in one year” – carryyourcup.org
Buying it just once a week or so? Remember that millions others are also disposing cups. Now imagine the amount of waste.
FACT- Americans alone throw away 25 BILLION styrofoam coffee cups every year.
In the U.K. Everyday 7 MILLION coffee cups are thrown away, with less than 1% being recycled.
3. Mend, not Replace
FACT: More than 15 million tons of used textile waste is generated each year in the United States alone. How much of this is recycled? About 0.1 %
Its also important to take into account the amount of resources required in textile manufacture- cotton, labour, machinery, chemicals, dyes, and WATER, lots of it. So the more you use and throw away, the higher your personal carbon footprint will be.
4. No more plastic shopping bags, please!
Every year ONE TRILLION plastic bags are produced and discarded world wide. Let that sink in for a minute – One TRILLION with a ‘T’. (A Trillion has 12 Zeros)
Even if 50% of us applied these 4 simple steps to our day-to-day, we’ll be preventing tonnes of waste going to the landfill each year. So go ahead, be an ecoholique, and spread the good word!
