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Save on plastic
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What
Plastic is everywhere. From the hospital band placed around your wrist at birth to the mouse your hand is resting on right now.
It's fantastic stuff but we have an unhealthy addiction to it and it’s clogging up our oceans and planet like nobody’s business.
Every piece of plastic ever made is still in our environment. It takes 450 years for one plastic bottle to break down, and even then it becomes microplastics that end up in our food.
Reducing single-use plastic packaging is an easy way to have a positive impact.
Benefits
For people
We've all seen plastic bags stuck in tree tops and empty bottles lying among the autumn leaves, but we can’t see the microplastics that are in our bodies. It’s estimated that the average adult ingests 2,000 microplastics a year just from salt alone!
A lot more research is needed to work out what this build up of microplastics in our bodies means for our health.
What we do know is that some chemical compounds found in plastics, such as BPA, are linked to serious health issues such as endocrine disruption, weight gain, insulin resistance, decreased reproductive health, and cancer.
For planet
As Blue Planet II so powerfully showed, plastic is clogging up our environment and our oceans and this is killing animals from pilot whale calves to albatrosses and dolphins.
As well, plastic is made from oil and making it uses a fair whack of energy: for every kilo of plastic six kilos of carbon dioxide are released. That’s equivalent to making 286 cups of tea.
800,000 tonnes of plastic are used annually in the EU, and only 6% of this is recycled. Even at that, plastic recycling is largely inefficient and energy-consuming compared to aluminium or glass.
How
This action can be taken to varying extremes, as a look at some zero waste shops and instagram accounts demonstrate.
Our advice is to start small and gradually step it up.
Every day quick wins
- Take a reusable shopping bag to the shops, for clothes shopping as well as groceries.
- Get a reusable water bottle. Make sure it’s BPA free, we like stainless steel bottles as they last longer. Pledge Tap it if you do.
- Disposable coffee cups are lined with plastic, so get a re-usable one, like a Keep Cup. You may get money off your brew, too! Pledge Lovely mug while you're at it.
- Say no to unnecessarily packaged goods - like plastic wrapped fruit and veg.
Step it up
- Get cleaning products in bulk. Ecover and Method sell a range of products in bulk so that you can endlessly refill your handy small bottles, using about 84% less plastic.
- Say no to straws and disposable cutlery.
- Get milk delivered in returnable glass bottles by a local milk delivery service.
Go for gold
- Avoid buying synthetic clothes as they shed plastic microfibres into the water. Pledge Passion fashion when you do.
- Help reduce this when washing synthetic clothes, with Guppyfriend Washing Bag.
- Invest in plastic free bathroom goods - from metal razors to mooncups; bamboo toothbrushes to refillable deodorants.
- Take your own containers and shop in zero waste stores, or buy things in larger quantities if you can, there’s often a small saving to be had too.
References
450 years for plastic bottle to break down
More research needed on microplastics and human health
Endocrine disrupting chemicals and their impact on human health
286 cups of tea from How bad are bananas by Mike Berners-Lee