16 Simple Ways To Reduce Your Plastic Consumption
Effective measures to help you save the planet
Plastic pollution is one of the major issues we face as a species today. The situation is so bad that the UN predicts there could be more plastic in the oceans than fish by 2050!
That is a scary possibility! It’s hard to imagine how could this happen. But when you watch documentaries which detail the scale of this problem, it becomes clear that issue is much more serious than many of us realise.
It’s in all of our interest to cut back on the amount of plastic that we consume if we want to live in a cleaner and more environmentally friendly planet.
Thankfully, it isn’t that hard. Awareness of the plastic problem is increasing and more plastic-free alternatives are now available.
In this article, I will give you 16 ways to reduce your plastic use that you can incorporate into your travels and daily life.
How bad is the plastic problem?
Just from walking around in my everyday life, I can see there is a serious problem with plastic. My hometown of Chester has big issues with plastic. It doesn’t matter where you go in the city, there is plastic everywhere.
If you consider that Chester is a small city and then extrapolate to the whole of the United Kingdom, then to Europe and then the rest of the world, the problem starts to hit home.
Plastic pollution is a gigantic problem, we’re just oblivious to how big it is.
Plastics are oil-based and are usually derived from crude oil. Instead of breaking down into its constituent parts, which is oil, plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, which remain as plastic.
This is not the same as glass which becomes sea glass if it ends up in the ocean, while aluminium cans are slowly oxidised by the air and water returning to aluminium atoms.
As plastic doesn’t break down, if animals end up digesting it, the plastic remains in their stomach. The more and more they eat, the fuller their stomach gets until they cannot digest anymore and die.
