One of the most straightforward ways each one of us can decrease our carbon footprint is to break the single-use plastic habit. In this age of conveniences, take-out food and beverages as well as delivered items often come in plastic containers. Everywhere we go, we see people drinking water from single-use plastic bottles.
Single use plastic shopping bags are the biggest landfillers next to plastic bottles, but fortunately, they are slowly making their way out of the mainstream marketplace. Grocery stores have been encouraging customers to bring their own totes and only provide bags upon demand. Even so, we still need to be conscientious in choosing paper bags when we forget to bring our own re-usable totes.
Take the single-use plastic challenge for a day! Increase that to most of the week, then incrementally build up to a month. You will see it can be done and you will have made a personal contribution to the maintenance of our planet! The challenge is simple: Go through a regular day but refrain from touching any single-use plastic item, whether it’s a bag or a bottle. Keep track of your trash: you will see how much less there is when you use recyclable containers and bottles instead of plastic bags and bottles.
Another way to get rid of the single-use-plastic habit is to make your own “zero-waste kit.”1 The five recommended items to include in the kit are a re-usable water bottle, a cloth shoulder bag or tote, a metal straw, a re-usable coffee/tea cup and a set of travel utensils. Each of these five items is an alternative to a common single-use plastic item. You can take it with you when you travel, go on a hike, go on a shopping spree, and so on.
The Active Wellness lifestyle is not only about our physical and mental health but also about the health of our planet. If everyone takes the single-use plastic challenge, the results would be astounding. Why wouldn’t every person want to contribute personally when 50% of plastic products are used for single-use purposes to the tune of 380 million tons a year?2 Since only 9% of plastic gets recycled globally, no wonder 10 million tons are found in our oceans worldwide.3
Governments are aware they need to legislate environmental regulations to help solve the problem of plastic waste. The U.S. Interior Department affirms that it will phase out the sale of single-use plastic products in national parks and other public lands by 2032.4 In Europe, wherever sustainable alternatives are easily available and affordable, single-use plastic products cannot be placed on the markets of EU Member States. This applies to cotton bud sticks, cutlery, plates, straws, stirrers, and sticks for balloons. It will also apply to cups, food and beverage containers made of expanded polystyrene, and on all products made of oxo-degradable plastic.5
We can be mindful and set our intentions to decreasing our carbon footprint. We have to start somewhere. At Nikken, we are committed to living in harmony with nature, and our water and air filters certainly were created with that in mind. From now through September 15, take advantage of our state-of-the-art filtration systems: all filters are 20% off. These include filters for the PiMag Waterfall®, PiMag® Sport Bottle and PiMag MicroJet® Showers (both hand held and wall mount models), PiMag® mineral stones and KenkoAir Purifier®.
1 https://rothys.com/blogs/the-loop/10-tips-to-reduce-plastic-use-be-eco-friendly?
2, 3 https://plasticoceans.org/the-facts/
5 https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/plastics/single-use-plastics_en
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