It’s Earth Day today (22/4/18) and the focus this year is to end plastic pollution. I can’t help but be motivated by the campaign when you see all those videos of huge amounts of plastics in the seas, rivers and blowing all over the countryside. It’s a topic that has motivated Amanda into action and she has already switched some of the products that we buy to biodegradable ones. It got me thinking that there are probably more things we could be doing and so I did some research and here are some tips to help reduce plastic pollution.
Reducing use of plastics
1. Use reusable water bottles
- Reusable plastic bottles
- Stainless steel bottles
2. Use reusable coffee cups
- Use in a coffee shops
- Hand over to barista
- Best are glass with a cork handle
3. Refuse or use reusable straws
- Refuse plastic straws in bars and restaurants
- Use stainless steel or glass reusable straws at home
4. Use reusable shopping bags
- Reusable grocery bags
- Reusable produce bags
- Emergency fold up bags
5. Use reusable food containers
- Use reusable containers (plastic or glass)
- Use reusable sandwich wraps
6. Use reusable cutlery
- Avoid buying take away products that have plastic cutlery
- Opt for wooden ones
- Take your own with you
7. Choose cardboard packaging over plastic
- Buy products in cardboard packaging rather than in plastic e.g. pasta in a box rather than in a bag
Recycle the plastics you do use
Another way to help reduce plastic pollution is to recycle the plastics that you use. In our village, we have one bin for rubbish, one bin for glass and one bin for recyclable packaging. We have been looking at all our packaging and trying to understand the logos on the packs and what can and can’t be recycled. The symbols in France (where we live) are a bit different to those in the UK so here is a link that explains how the packaging symbols work in the UK so that you can also recycle more of the plastics you use.
Remove plastic from the environment
The last way that we can help reduce plastic pollution is to remove plastic from the environment. Whenever we go dog walking, in addition to making sure we pick up our dogs’ poop in biodegradable poo bags, we also make sure we pick up any plastic rubbish that we see on our walks. That way we are helping to remove some of the plastic that is in our local environment and making the mountains cleaner for everyone to enjoy.
Something else that Amanda is passionate about is food waste. She hates throwing away food that has gone bad, whether it’s leftovers that we didn’t eat or something that has wilted before we got to it. That’s why she’s helped me put together this list of 10 ways to stop wasting food.
