#PlasticFreeJuly
A month to challenge yourself to reduce your impact
It turns out that if we pay attention, there are all sorts of very interesting environmentally friendly activities being organized all over the world. One of them is Plastic Free July, organized as a full month challenge to raise awareness and reduce the amount of plastic pollution our planet has to endure with. Why doing a challenge? Well, it can be fun, we can learn a lot, and on top of that we can reduce our negative impact on the environment. I would call that a win-win situation!
There is a lot of talk about the problem of plastic. To be completely honest, I don’t think plastic is a bad material per se. The problem has more to do with how we use it than with the material itself. Plastic is all around us, in the fibres of our clothes, in the bits and pieces of our electronics, in our food packaging, and in almost every container I can think of. If you look around where you are right now, I’m pretty sure you can see at least one piece of plastic.
Plastic is made using the remnants of the oil process, which in turn comes from what remains of dinosaurs and plankton that lived millions of years ago. Plastic was invented in the mid 1900’s, but it wasn’t until the 70’s that it became massively popular. It is light, durable and practical but we seem to have fallen too much in love with it, as every year we produce over 300 million tons¹ of it. And here is where the big problem with plastic comes from, most of it is used for only a couple of minutes and then it is discarded, passed over to nature to deal with for the coming centuries. The problem with this material is that we abuse it, and that we have turned something that was created for long term durability into a single-use element.
The problem of single-use-plastic
What do I mean with “single-use-plastic”? The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has defined single-use plastics as “goods that are made primarily from fossil fuel–based chemicals (petrochemicals) and are meant to be disposed of right after use — often, in mere minutes. Single-use plastics are most commonly used for packaging and service ware, such as bottles, wrappers, straws, and bags.” Personally, the thought of using dead dinosaurs to wrap my lunch or to pour the morning coffee in sounds a bit creepy. But the real problem is that the single-use way of “consuming” plastic harms the environment and ourselves.
Plastic takes hundreds of years to biodegrade and through this process, it breaks down into very small particles, commonly known as “microplastics”. From the moment you have a piece of plastic in your hands and until it is broken into microplastics, it “releases the toxic chemical additives that were used to define, harden and shape it. These chemicals and small particles of plastic can be ingested or absorbed by wildlife and even humans. Our bodies confuse these chemicals for Estrogen (the hormone that determines feminine characteristics). An overabundance of “environmental estrogen” disrupts our endocrine systems and is suspected of causing severe health disorders.”²
Furthermore, since they become such small particles they can travel pretty much everywhere. Microplastics have been found in the most remote locations like in both the Antarctic and Arctic Seas. They are in remote inhabited locations like the Henderson Islands³, and scientists have even confirmed that microplastic has become as a new atmospheric pollutant⁴ and that they are falling back via raindrops⁵.
When ingested, plastic can cause irreparable damage both to humans and wildlife. Plastics can accumulate in an animal’s body creating health issues that can, often, cause death. Since this is a relatively new problem, not enough research has been done to show the impacts on human health. That being said, “what is known is that microplastics smaller than 25 microns can enter the human body through the nose or mouth and those less than five microns can end up in lung tissue. “We do know that other types of small particles do have health impacts.”⁶ We can eat microplastics by eating the meat of animals that have ingested plastic, inhale the small particles in the air or even drink it, since research has shown that 90 percent of the bottled water contains microplastics⁷. Which poses a damage to our health we don’t yet fully understand.
As it is, “we are already unable to cope with the amount of plastic waste we generate unless we rethink the way we manufacture, use and manage plastics.”⁸ This, the risk to wildlife and to ourselves are probably enough reasons for all of us to want to reduce the amount of plastic that we use. Don’t you think?
What if for what remains of July we could all try to avoid plastic? According to The Globalist, the average person living in North america or Europe uses about 100 kilograms of plastic each year, most of it in the form of packaging. I’m not saying that we need to live as in the 1800s, it is ok to use your lunch box or reusable plastic cup and keep your computer. But what we need to drastically reduce is the amount of single-use plastics we use like bags, straws, take-out containers, food wrapping, etc.
Here are some tips to get you started
Always bring a reusable bag with you, I find that sometimes I end up making a quick run to the grocery store on my way back home from work, which meant I ended up getting those “accidental” plastic bags when there were too many things to carry just in my hands. I’ve learned to always carry a small tote bag folded inside my handbag to make sure I can do spontaneous shopping if needed.
Try avoiding plastic food wraps. I know, there are these beautiful beeswax wraps that are amazing, but honestly I have never bothered to get them. I just put leftovers in a bowl and cover them with a clean dish. They last as much as with food wrappers in the fridge.
Buy in bulk. The grocery store is an endless source of plastic wrapping, have you ever thought about how much plastic you bring back home when you come back from the store? You went for fruit and noodles and brought back 10 pieces of plastic with you that will go directly in the trash. Which is a total shame. You don’t need to be perfect, I started by cleaning and removing the labels of old jars of marmalade and honey we had at home and they work perfectly!
Ask for your drink without a straw. The paper ones are better, but the thing is we are still reinforcing the single-use culture and at some point we won’t have any sustainable way of producing paper straws if we stick to this mentality. If you really need a straw, buy reusable ones. I have glass ones at home, we have had them for about a year now and they are amazing.
Last, but not least, share your own tips. It helps a lot to see what others are doing and how they have solved certain problems you have not been able to fix yet.
Are you ready to try the #PlasticFreeJuly challenge?
[1] The world’s plastic problem in numbers (World Economic Forum, 2018)
[3] Microplastics have invaded some of the planet’s most remote places (Huffpost, 2019)
[4] Microplastics are raining down from the sky (National Geographic, 2019)
[5] Plastic rain is the new acid rain (Wired, 2020)
[6] Microplastics are raining down from the sky (National Geographic, 2019)
[7] WHO launches health review after microplastics founds in 90% of bottled water (The Guardian, 2018)
[8] Single-use plastics: a road to sustainability (UN, 2018)
