Why I HATE Plastic...

I'll get right to the point, here several reasons why I HATE plastic:

Reason #1: Since the 1950's, one billion tons of plastic has been discarded and may persist for hundreds or even thousands of years. Much is floating around in our oceans, last I heard it was twice the size of Texas floating around in the Pacific.

Reason #2: Unfortunately, recycling of plastics has proven to be a difficult process. Under 7% of discarded plastic is currently recycled in the U.S.

Reason #3: Plastic is resistant to biodegradation, thus it will remain on the Earth long enough to become my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren's problem to solve.

Plastic is in every aspect of our lives at home, at work, at hospitals, at school, and the list goes on and on. What frightens me is that there are chemicals that leach from the plastic that can be potentially harmful to our health, such as Bisphenol-A (which is found in water bottles and baby bottles) as well as Polystyrene (PS or Styrofoam.) 

As a society, we don't question the products put on shelves for us to purchase. Instead, we put trust into companies in hopes that our best interests are being looked after, such as our health and well-being, though many of the chemicals used in making plastic are suspected endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) or suspected carcinogens. Though most of us are blindly faithful to plastic and all that it has to offer, convenience and easy accessibility. 

Here are a few alternative products that will reduce or eliminate plastic from your life.

Reusable Water Container: Sigg reusable containers are also recyclable, as they are made from 100% pure aluminum. Does aluminum scare you away because of the suspected link to Alzheimer's? Don't be, the interior coating is unbreakable, even if the exterior is dented... it will not break the coating, nor will your liquids touch the aluminum.

"About 1.5 million tons of plastic are used in the bottling of 89 billion litres of drinking water each year." -The Green Book

Another alternative to water bottles is a water filter. By utilizing the water from your tap, which has higher standards for clean water than bottled, you are saving not only plastic waste from our planet but you're saving the use of millions of barrels of petroleum from being used AND keeping toxins out of your body!

Un-plastic Your Kitchen: I have long loved Evelyn Fields and her passion to keep plastic out of her kitchen. Evelyn also has an Etsy store where she sells reusable eco-bags for snacks and sandwiches, as well as napkins, bread bags, and coffee filters!! Not only will you eliminate plastic from your kitchen by using reusable bags, you'll save money too!

Another way to dispose of unnecessary plastic is to use glass straws instead of plastic ones. Straws are as useless as chop sticks, we use them once and throw them away, wasting plastic that will take hundreds or thousands of years to biodegrade. 

Straws by Carli are lifetime guaranteed, which means if it breaks she'll send you a new one. They're made out of Pyrex, which means they are microwave and dishwasher safe but can break if dropped. (Just like any glass.)

I love that she puts bends in some of them!!

Glass containers: This is a no-brainer for me, as chemicals will likely leach from the container into the food and where do you think the chemicals go once they're in our food?? If the product suggests not to microwave food in a plastic container... it's likely that it isn't safe to store your food in a plastic container as well. 

Take out containers: When you eat out at a restaurant, other than asking for TAP water instead of bottled water, ask for minimal containers to take your leftovers home in. (If possible, request that your container not be stored in styrofoam.) This is the fastest growing cause of plastic waste currently in the U.S. and if you're not going to eat the leftover food, instead of having the restaurant throw it away, ask for it all to be put in a cardboard container and take the food home to dump in your compost pile!! (You have compost piles, right?) ;)

Reusable shopping bags: This has become increasingly popular in the last couple of years, and throughout Ontario it costs you money if you forget your reusable bags and have to resort to plastic. I'm hoping that plastic bags become obsolete and a thing of the past as fast as they came into our lives, but if you do use plastic bags, I highly urge you to recycle them!

Product Packaging: Next to take out containers, product packaging is the 2nd fastest growing cause of plastic waste. Just think about how much plastic wraps your child's action figure! (With no good reason too!) Unfortunately, many of us do not have the power to make a company reduce the amount of plastic used, but we can purchase goods from eco-minded companies, which essentially makes the bad company use less plastic. (Because when we make a purchase we're voting on what we believe is acceptable and what is not, and hopefully they'll start to change their horrible packaging ways.)

One of my favourite places to search for children's toys is Etsy. Aside from the recycled, upcycled, and eco-friendly products, these sellers are mindful of how they package their item by keeping it minimal and plastic free! 

So, let's detach ourselves from the chemical filled and petroleum eating plastic monster and think simple, think of how your parents and their parents bought groceries, stored food, and drank water. Simple and without the ease of plastic. 

North American's are not only addicted to oil, they're addicted to plastic as well! We've become lazy and rely on the ease of plastic encompassing our lives with convenience. It is time to break that addiction and start cleaning up our Earth through recycling and using reusable products!

Until next time... think and be green.

Love,

Katie

"Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value." -Richard Buckminster Fuller

There's Always A GREENER Way!

"It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment." -Ansel Adams

How does one become "green." Is it an unconscious decision or conscious one? Is it born into us to be aware of how we affect our environment or do we eventually take notice of our actions and what consequences sprout from them? I believe it is different for everyone, depending on our up bringing, the immediate environment we live in, and the schools we attend. But I will not accept that we are too far out of the loop to understand that what we do has a consequence, which means we have a choice!

For me, going green was a conscious decision after many years of living with parents who do what they can with what they have, from recycling, reusing, and growing their own veggies and fruits. Before that, I was a typical American who wanted everything and was spoiled by our detached sense of reality that our actions have no detrimental consequences. The truth is that our actions do indeed have detrimental consequences on the environment and I want to do what I can to eliminate my contribution to those negative affects on our Earth.

So, I wanted to educate myself as much as possible about what I could do at home, at work, at the grocery store and how I could teach others. If that makes me part of the movement, than count me in, because I will do everything I can to keep our Earth happy, healthy, and hopeful for a cleaner future. Technology has come a long way, but it has taken us away from simple living that kept a balance between us and Earth.

"We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children." -Native American Quote

I recently came across the book, The Green Book by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen. Forwards are written by Cameron Diaz and William McDonough. My attention was brought to this book because of Cameron Diaz's connection to it. I heard she was a green, hippie gal and I was interested in hearing how she became affiliated with this book. I finished the book two days ago and decided I wanted to share these tips with as many people I could reach. The book is filled with hundreds of ways we can improve our life in simple, inexpensive ways that help us and the environment we love without dramatically changing our lives. Yeah, it's that good!

So, for the next little while, all of my blogs will be about how to be green-er. I will be posting links to eco-friendly products, give you tips of how to recycle and reuse items in your home, and how some of the things we use can have negative affects on not only the environment, but our health and the health of our children.

"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -Joanne Kathleen Rowling

I'll start in the easiest place to create change, our home. This is the place we spend most of our time and because of this, it is where we create the most waste and waste the most. Aside from the amount of trash we accumulate in our lifetime, which I will hit on in another blog, we waste the most water at home. (On an individual level.)

"By 2025, the world must increase its water supply by 22 percent in order to meet its needs. Meanwhile, 40 percent of the drinking water supplied to homes is flushed down the toilet." -The Green Book, pg. 2

Not only is that quote eye opening, it begs to question why we use drinking water to flush human waste. Not to mention that 40 percent of household water bills in the summer are attributed to watering our lawn, with clean drinking water!! This baffles me, especially since millions and millions of people around the world have little to no clean drinking water in their daily lives. We use clean drinking water so frivolously, while others around the world walk hours in search of clean drinking water for a single days use.

There has to be a breaking point in N. America where we say, "That's Enough!" Instead of continuing our selfish behaviour and throwing perfectly clean drinking water down the toilet and on our lawns, we need to evolve and find a better way to conserve the little clean drinking water we have left!

So here are some tips to how we can conserve the water we have.

1. Take shorter showers. "Every two minutes you save on your shower can conserve more than ten gallons of water. And that can add up: If everyone in the country saved just one gallon from their daily shower, over the course of a year it would equal twice the amount of freshwater withdrawn from the Great Lakes every day. The Great Lakes are the world's largest source of fresh water."

"I found out that every two minutes in the shower uses as much water as a person in Africa uses for everything in their life for a whole day - drinking, bathing, cooking, and cleaning... everything!" - Jennifer Aniston

Another thing you could do to prevent gallons to be dumped down the drain is to install a low-flow shower head. There are many different brands and styles, but I've found Ecoflo to have several style shower heads to fit the needs of any style bathroom. A family of four could save up to 42,200 gallons of water in a year with a low-flow shower head, and it's as simple as changing old, energy eating incandescent light bulbs to the energy efficient CFL bulbs!

2. Turn the tap off. "Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth. You'll conserve up to 5 gallons of water per day. Throughout the entire United States, the daily savings could add up to 1.5 billion gallons - more water than is consumed per day across all of New York City."

3. Flush once less per day. The average toilet in North American households flushes down 3 gallons of water with each flush. Flush when you need to, and adapt the selective flush, "When it's yellow, let it mellow. When it's brown, flush it down." Though, I'm not too keen on this idea, as I don't like my waste mellowing in my toilet. Instead, I prefer the dual-flush toilet. The first (for #1) uses only .8 gallons of water and the second (for #2) uses 1.6 gallons of water. There are also dry flush toilets as well, for those who don't want to waste any clean drinking water for their waste to be flushed.

4. Rain Barrels. Since so much of our water is used on our lawns in the summer, a simple solution is to resort to our free source of water... RAIN! Rain barrels are simple and relatively inexpensive, and can be used for flower beds, gardens, and lawns if set up appropriately. By elevating your rain barrel, the free use of gravity will have enough force to push water out of a hose to water anything and everything outside.

Another way rain could be used to replace clean drinking water is through a rain catch for your toilet water, utility sink, and showers. (If you're okay with rain water for your shower, if not you could put a filter on it to make it cleaner.) Ask your plumber about rain catches and if they're legal in your area. Unfortunately, some regions of N. America don't allow rain water to be directed into our homes, though it makes perfect sense to use rain water instead of clean, drinking water to flush our waste down the toilet.

I hope this helps everyone find simple steps around the home to conserve water. And until next time... think and be green!

Love,
Katie

"It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment." -Ansel Adams