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On Earth Day, take the time to consider and scale back the environmental affect of your day by day decisions. Use your Earth Day to start out inventorying the gadgets you may have in your house. Identify non-biodegradable gadgets like plastic, which litter our landscapes and oceans and might spend centuries in landfills. Your record will make it easier to make extra sustainable decisions when it’s time to exchange these gadgets.
Globally, we produce 400 million tons of plastic waste annually. Around 8 million metric tons of it leads to our oceans and this quantity is projected to develop to 53 million tons by 2030 if we don’t take the motion crucial to cut back our plastic waste output. The U.S. is the biggest contributor to the worldwide plastic air pollution downside, disposing of extra tons of plastic waste annually than all of the EU nations mixed.
“The world is producing twice as a lot plastic waste as 20 years in the past, with the majority of it ending up in landfill, incinerated or leaking into the surroundings, and solely 9% efficiently recycled,” in accordance with a 2022 OECD report. In 2021, 40 million tons of plastic waste was generated within the U.S. and solely 5% to six% was recycled whereas 10% was incinerated and the remaining 85% was despatched to landfills.
The motion to ban single-use plastic is gradual and we won’t be able to cease its manufacturing in a single day. However, we will take the initiative to be extra aware of what we select to purchase and use in our day by day lives.
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Taking Stock of Non-Biodegradable Personal Care Products
You can begin your plastic inventory in probably the most incessantly visited rooms in your own home, the lavatory. There are so many private care merchandise within the rest room that we use and get rid of usually that aren’t biodegradable, equivalent to disposable plastic razors and plastic toothbrushes.
Identify the gadgets in your rest room that contribute to our plastic air pollution downside. When you’ve used them up, take the required steps to recycle them responsibly utilizing Earth911’s Recycling Search and change to a extra environmentally accountable answer by reusing, repurposing, or refilling. Once you begin the method, you’ll be able to progressively substitute gadgets to cut back your affect.
The best choice is to exchange your merchandise with another manufactured from a renewable, biodegradable materials, if it exists. Failing that, search for sturdy rest room gadgets you’ll be able to reuse for so long as potential to delay their end-of-life journey to the landfill. It could not all the time be potential or sensible to reuse some gadgets for sanitary causes however pay attention to what you’ll be able to reuse or refill and purpose to buy items with an extended helpful life.
Refillable Glass Containers To Replace Plastic Bottles
There are many choices for changing or lowering plastics with extra sustainable private care merchandise. Some manufacturers, like Common Good, promote using refillable glass containers for liquid merchandise like hand soap, dish soap, and laundry soap. They have refill stations at their shops that assist you to carry your personal containers or refill and reuse the pouch or bottle you buy from them. Though fully eliminating plastic from the packaging design is a problem, their refill pouches use 83% much less plastic than a bottles and could be recycled. Each pouch accommodates sufficient liquid for 2 glass bottle refills. Their merchandise are plant-based and freed from sulfates, parabens, and phthalates.
Need refillable glass bottles for different private care merchandise, equivalent to shampoo and hand lotion? Church Street Designs has a selection of bottles with pump dispensers for all of your liquid formulation and so they’re obtainable in amber or clear glass. This permits you the pliability to purchase varied sorts of refill formulation for all of your hygiene wants.
As for dental care, you’ll be able to substitute your plastic tubes with toothpaste tablets in a refillable glass bottle. Weldental’s Chewtab tablets make brushing your tooth easy and plastic-free. They’re made with pure elements, together with non-GMO xylitol for sweetening, quillaja saponaria extract for foaming, and calcium phosphate for wholesome tooth enamel.
Organic and Natural To Reduce Plastic
Another choice to think about in changing plastics in your rest room is to purchase the product in a unique kind. For instance, as an alternative of shaving foam in a non-biodegradable dispenser, think about a shaving soap in a solid bar with no plastic packaging. Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve Company gives bar soap to your face and physique manufactured from pure elements like avocado oil, natural cleaning soap nuts, and bentonite clay. Its elements are licensed as natural by the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA).
Another product that’s standard within the bathe is the plastic physique scrub. Instead of shopping for greenback retailer plastic physique scrubs, go for an organic loofah, like those by Eco Beige, produced from a gourd within the cucumber household. Unlike plastic scrubs, loofahs are 100% biodegradable and compostable. You may even grow your own loofah gourds for a very sustainable various.
Bamboo as a Sustainable Option for Personal Care
Choosing private care merchandise manufactured from bamboo is one other strategy to substitute plastics. Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on earth and intensely versatile. One of the obvious and best methods to cut back our plastic waste is to exchange plastic toothbrushes with bamboo ones.
According to National Geographic, if every American changed their toothbrush each three to 4 months because the dental affiliation suggests, about 23 billion toothbrushes would find yourself in landfills annually. Retailers are flooded with big-brand dental care merchandise made with plastics. But you will discover sustainable replacements for each your floss and toothbrush.
EcoLuxe gives FSC Certified merchandise, equivalent to a bamboo toothbrush with a replaceable bristle that’s made with natural castor bean oil and obtainable in 4 shapes. By changing solely the biodegradable bristle each three to 4 months, you prolong the lifetime of your toothbrush. When it wears out, you’ll be able to responsibly get rid of the bamboo deal with and bristle head in an industrial composting facility (if accepted) with out leaving microplastics within the surroundings.
Another dental product you’ll be able to simply substitute is your dental floss. Most of the merchandise obtainable to us by way of retail channels are manufactured from artificial supplies, equivalent to non-biodegradable nylon, and are available hard-to-recycle plastic containers. Seek a floss manufactured from bamboo fibers, equivalent to that provided by EcoLuxe. It’s coated in pure candelilla wax and is available in a refillable glass container.
Another wrongdoer to the plastic downside is the disposable razor. By 2024, it’s estimated that 160 million disposable plastic razors will find yourself in U.S. landfills. Replace them with a reusable bamboo razor, just like the one provided by Public Goods and reuse them for so long as you may have hair in your physique. All it is advisable to do is substitute the blade cartridge. Unfortunately, there’s presently no answer for a 100% biodegradable model however a reusable razor manufactured from bamboo and steel helps divert plastic waste from landfills.
Your Earth Day Commitment
Your journey to a extra sustainable way of life is a long-term dedication that received’t occur in a single day. Think about your buying choices and the way they affect the environment. By making accountable decisions, equivalent to plastic-free and sustainable private care merchandise, we will gradual the tide of plastic air pollution.
About the Author
Chanelle Dupre is an entrepreneur and weblog author who writes about single parenting and sustainability. She is concentrated on exploring new innovation that fuses know-how and sustainability to help the motion in direction of a round economic system.
