Everyday Plastics - How do we reduce?

Plastic is everywhere. Don’t be surprised when I say a whopping 91% of the plastics produced to date haven’t been recycled yet. Yes, 91%.

Plastic has subtly become an inherent part of our day-to-day lifestyle. Sometimes we use plastics and other non-recyclable products without even knowing that they aren’t recyclable; or, let’s say that we are not yet mindful of it. People say Ignorance is bliss, but not when your ignorance is so colossal that it will impact the world in a negative way.

To start with, let me give you few examples of our day-to-day ignorance:

1. Chewing Gum: Gum is made of synthetic rubber, aka plastic. And worse, some people find it addictive too.
2. The Milk covers that we buy literally every day quintessentially.
3. Your Toothbrush, Razor, and most of our everyday essentials. Almost every cosmetic contains microplastics.
4. The plastic containers in your kitchen that you use to store kitchen supplies
5. If you are a part of a brown household, there will definitely be a Plastic cover to store all the plastic covers available in your house.
6. The single-use plastics such as straws, cutlery, water bottles, cotton ear-buds/Q-tip and grocery covers that are inevitably a part of shopping and dining out.

OUCH! That’s a lot of plastics, yeah.

Now let’s move on to the GOOD NEWS! Here are some suggestions which you can use to replace plastic in our everyday lives.

1. Buy Milk in Cartons instead of plastic covers. And if you are an Indian, then return Aavin milk covers and get 10 paise per cover! The state-owned Aavin Milk has introduced the milk cover return programme to recycle empty milk covers.
2. Keep in mind that small pieces can never be recycled at any cost and hence be mindful when snipping off your milk packets. You can Slit it instead of snipping it totally. A study says in an Indian city called Bangalore alone, 5 Million pieces can be stopped from getting ended up in landfills.
3. There’s always space in your bags for a few stainless steel containers, copper bottles and metal straws. Hence always carry some in case you want to pack your leftover dinner or stop for a sudden cool drink.
4. Try buying your grocery in bulk that will reduce the number of plastic bags you will be using.

There are alternatives you can choose to avoid plastics and old conventional aluminium/stainless steel. Here are some:

Replace your plastic or boring water bottles with Copper bottles.

Replace your plastic cutlery with Coconut shell cutlery

Replace your old plastic pens with recyclable eco-friendly Paper-pencils. Some of them even come with plantable seeds in them! Interesting, right?

Store your veggies in specialised cotton bags instead of plastic.