The Daily Assignment

RECAP: Last time we talked about using a water bottle. Americans purchase about 50 billion water bottles per year which averages 13 water bottles per month for every American. That’s just the United States! How about purchasing a nice refillable water bottle you can carry around and fill up instead of purchasing beverages in all those easily disposable plastic bottles? (If only 1 million Americans made this simple change, that would be a year with 156 million less plastic bottles! Pretty cool right)?

THIS WEEK:  Two things you can do:

USE LESS WATER. I began with my showers and timed myself. In the good old days, I liked a nice long shower. But in those days, we didn’t have climate change or water shortages like we do today. I have cut my showers down  to 2-3 minutes and it’s perfectly fine. It was an easy change. I also used to leave the water running when I was shaving,  brushing my teeth, or washing dishes. I don’t do that anymore. I have heard that a habit takes about 3-4 weeks to develop, so you must keep at this for it to stick.

TRY USING LESS SINGLE USE PLASTICS  like plastic sandwich bags or one-gallon bags. THESE PLASTIC BAGS CANNOT BE RECYLCED BY MOST OF OUR RECLYCLING FACILITIES! Let’s be real – we’re not ready to go cold turkey on plastics. But when it comes to plastics, LESS IS MORE! Consolidate or use substitutes like paper when you can.

REMEMBER: Single-use plastics have an average useful life of 12-15 minutes and can take up to 500 years to disintegrate.

Roughly 50% of global annual plastic production is for single-use plastics. The world produces about 5 trillion plastic bags each year.

Americans throw away about 100 billion plastic bags each year which is equal to dumping 12 million barrels of crude oil.

The more convenient something is to dispose of, the more havoc it is going to eventually wreak upon our environment. Let’s fight our impulses to inundate ourselves with disposable products. We can use metal or bamboo. Let’s get into the habit of washing and reusing instead of throwing everything away. These are easy changes to make!