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1 simple easy choice you can make to reduce plastic in our environment
Refuse to buy bottled water.....
Don't use Saran Wrap....
Agreed... have never bought either...
I avoid items I cannot recycle or re-purpose.
If given the opportunity I will almost always repair over replace.
A few simply lifestyle choices can make a huge difference over time and many will save you money... not to mention helping to reduce the burden on the environment.
Why dont supermarkets give out heavy duty paper bags, wouldnt that help. I have a large shopping bag I try to remember to take with me to reuse, instead of having to use their horrible skinny poly ones that rip easily anyway....
Why dont supermarkets give out heavy duty paper bags, wouldnt that help. I have a large shopping bag I try to remember to take with me to reuse, instead of having to use their horrible skinny poly ones that rip easily anyway....
That's the point... they are now prohibited by law from giving away bags... if you ask for one, they must charge for it...
Like everything else plastic is recycleable. It the states, the vast majority of it goes to landfills where is it decomposed into methane. So you greenies out there should use as much as possible. It reduces out demand of fossile fuels.
Also, get rid of your Iphones, bottled water and starbucks if you really want to save the enviroment.
Next door to where I work, is a warehouse and they have stacks and stacks of bottled water, gatorade and all the soft drinks, looks to me, in the millions.
where does all this plastic go when people are done drinking thier drink.
I too agree with several other posters, dont buy bottled water. I dont think it taste any different than tap water, I am from NY though and we are supposedly have the best water..???
I was reading this book: 'Zero Waste Lifestyle' and it explains recycling and low waste living quite well. Plastic is not 100% recycled, in fact it can only be 'downcycled'...made into other products 2 or 3 times and that's it. What that means is that all plastic created will NOT be able to be made into numerous things over and over again but all plastic made will exist forever. At the rate we are creating plastic it makes me wonder if plastic will take over the world? Also, plastic mixed with something else (called composite) cannot be recycled. So if you have to buy something, don't buy mixed materials....ex: 'cardboard in wax'...like drink cups. NONE of those drink cups can be recycled. Just think of how many there are on this earth.
I was reading this book: 'Zero Waste Lifestyle' and it explains recycling and low waste living quite well. Plastic is not 100% recycled, in fact it can only be 'downcycled'...made into other products 2 or 3 times and that's it. What that means is that all plastic created will NOT be able to be made into numerous things over and over again but all plastic made will exist forever. At the rate we are creating plastic it makes me wonder if plastic will take over the world? Also, plastic mixed with something else (called composite) cannot be recycled. So if you have to buy something, don't buy mixed materials....ex: 'cardboard in wax'...like drink cups. NONE of those drink cups can be recycled. Just think of how many there are on this earth.
Im not a big fan of plastic in many of the ways it is used today but lets get our facts straight.
ALL plastic will recycle to one form or another.
If it wasent for the recycle tax that is put on it in many places today there would be many more products made from it. ALL plastic will oxidize and degrade. That is the nature of Carbon. It oxidizes. SOme like PP in bottles and PE in bags degrades quickly while other engineered plastics can take a long time. But they all degrade. An analist of those floating piles of plastic in the oceans date most of the materials at less than 7 years old and the vast majority of it is already well on its way to complete decomposition.
You hear from people all the time how their plastic products they buy are junk and break quickly yet the next sentance is how plastic never goes away. That breaking is because it is already deteriorating.
It also interesting that the enviomental movement fought against glass bottles for the same reason they are fighting against plastic bottles today. There used to be TV ads showing piles of glass bottles in the forrests and stream beds and pretty much everywhere else. And it was true, But show me glass bottles laying everywhere today? There arent any. They were cleaned up and recycled. Glass by the way IS 100% recycleable.
What many don't realize, although plastic bottles can be recycled, the caps cannot. I have been told that is you put a bottle in the recycle bin and it has a cap on it, they will send it to the landfill. The high volume recycling does not allow time to take the caps off. We have seen the ocean pollution first hand, and Caps are the #1 culprit. Oil bottles and tennis shoes are not far behind.
Even if glass and plastic are recyclable, it takes energy and other resources to do it. Also, lots of people don't recycle even when it's easy to do so. It's always better to avoid a single-use item if you can.
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