Lately, I have been seeing a lot of advertisements and videos of environment conservation revolving around Plastic usage. I began to think how much plastic we use every day and it astonished me.

It is high time that we stop with the saying that it is just one straw, just one polythene bag and just one plastic bottle. There are 7.7 Billion people in the world, that ‘one’ becomes a huge number collectively.

Sparing a second though before buying any plastic item shouldn’t be that hard given the fact that we get everything from the environment around us. Everything. Stop harming it.

There are plenty of alternatives available, do not blame others for producing plastic because that is not under your control. What is under your control is to limit your daily Plastic Usage. Do your bit to save our planet.

Plastic Usage on a normal day

Let’s start with the basics. Almost everyone of us buys a kind of drink such as water and beverages on a daily basis. It comes in a plastic bottle or in a plastic cup with a plastic straw.

How long does it take you to finish your drink? Not more than 15 minutes. And how long does it take for that plastic you just used for 15 minutes to degrade in the environment? At least 450 years.

Also Read: How to Practice Minimalism in your Home

Different kinds of plastic can degrade at different times, but the average time for a plastic bottle to completely degrade is at least 450 years. It can even take some bottles 1000 years to biodegrade! That’s a long time for even the smallest bottle. 90% of the bottles are not even recycled. (Source: Postconsumers)

What can you do to reduce plastic usage?

To decrease your plastic usage, you can invest in buying a water bottle for yourself and switch to refilling it at times when you would usually buy bottled water.

When you go out in cafes or similar places, instead of asking for straws, carry your own paper straw, metal straw or a bamboo straw. Metal and Bamboo straws can be washed and re-used very easily.

In small get-togethers with family and friends, use paper plates and wooden/steel spoons instead of plastic ones.

As I’m writing this blog post, I have placed an order of 4 copper straws which come with a straw cleaner too. You can use this straw at cafes to drink your juices and shakes by telling them not to give you plastic straws.

Four straws for just Rs. 320 is a negligible price for saving the planet.

Plastic is flooding our oceans

This video by United Nations explains how plastic lives forever. Almost every plastic item that was ever made still exists in some form. With the population on a continuous rise, plastic production is expected to be tripled by 2050.

Most of the marine waste is composed of plastic bags, bottle caps, plastic water bottles, and Styrofoam cups

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

It is a gyre of marine debris in the northern Pacific Ocean and is also known as the Pacific trash vortex. In oceanography, gyre means a large system of ocean currents involved with huge wind movements.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch exists between Hawaii and California. According to theoceancleanup.com , there were more than 1.8 Trillion pieces of plastic floating in the patch which weighs approximately 80,000 tonnes.

This Garbage patch is like a floating island of waste. It is not stationary at a place, it keeps on floating in the ocean.

This plastic floating in the ocean is broken down by sunlight into smaller fragments through the process which is called photodegradation.

Scientists have analysed and calculated that there are about 1.9 million bits of microplastic per square mile.

The Plastic we dump comes back in our plates

The ever-increasing percentage of microplastics in the ocean comes full circle. It is us, humans who put it there in the first place and we are the ones who consume it the last. How?

It is a very simple thing to understand. A small fish eats bits of plastic unknowingly or a bigger fish might think a shiny piece of polythene bag is a fish and eat it.

It makes them feel full when they’re actually not. This leads them to starve and die. Also, they might get eaten by by bigger fish and so on.

In the end, we humans eat fish like Tuna in our meals which have microplastics in their body because of the waste we dumped.

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The post How Can You Reduce Plastic Usage And Save The Environment appeared first on GarimaShares.