Reduce first then Reuse and finally Recycle

I was at the University of Virginia graduation last weekend. As we walked up to the lawn a gentleman offered us water bottles. It was humid and hot and my husband and I took one and said we would share. As I looked around waiting for the diploma ceremony to begin I thought about all those water bottles. There we recycle bins everywhere I looked, but the truth is that recycling encourages single use products like water bottles, straws, disposable plates etc. Recycling is only beneficial only if it reduces the production of virgin plastic from oil, not if it encourages more single use products. It is reported in New Scientist that 50% of PET plastic is collected for recycling, but only about 7% is turned into new bottles. Why, it is cheaper to make new plastic.

Since the beginning of the 20th century mankind has made an estimated 8,300 million metric tons of plastic. Around 6,200 million metric tons has been thrown away and almost 5,000 million metric tons of plastic pollutes the environments (our oceans, river and streams, estuaries, along roadways etc.) or dumped into landfills. This is an environmental catastrophe on a global scale in the making. Already there are areas in the developing world where people live ankle deep in plastic trash and filth.

The biggest challenge to solving the plastic pollution problem is human behavior. The best approach is to reduce your consumption of plastic. If we do nothing, much of the world will be knee deep in plastic in a generation. We must reduce plastic waste. Here are the 5 things you can do to reduce plastic waste:

1. Eliminate single-use plastic- water bottles, straws, disposal plates. However, think what you substitute. A steel water bottle needs to be used 500 times for its carbon footprint to shrink below the carbon footprint of a single use PET plastic bottle. A permanent plastic bottle is a better substitute.
2. Reduce Packaging you buy. By buying large containers and avoiding single serve containers. Use bar soap instead of a pump bottle.
3. Buy your Products in concentrated form. Buy your detergents and soaps in concentrated form, less packaging and less weight to ship. You can dilute it at home.
4. Do not buy any products with mixed material packaging. These materials cannot be recycled. These include the food pouches especially popular in baby food and bags used for chips, pretzels and the like. Also, avoid using those black plastic food containers which are not easily sorted by the infrared sorting lights in recycling plants and are often simply trashed.
5. Finally, consider consuming less packaged food, and fewer plastic items. Reduce.