As you walk through the store or look around your house, you will realize most items are made up of some sort of plastic packaging or shell. From juice bottles, makeup containers, soap containers and more, whether we like it or not, plastic is always around us.
Unfortunately, cutting out plastic completely may be near impossible if you live a fast pace lifestyle like many of us do now and days. However, there are a few things you can do to cut out unnecessarily plastic use in your everyday life that doesn’t take up extra time.
Reusable bottles
This is one of the simplest ways to cut out excess plastic. Buying a reusable stainless-steel bottle will not only prevent countless plastic bottles ending up in our oceans and dumps, it will also save you time and money by taking less trips to the store to buy water in bottles.
Why not use plastic reusable bottles?
Many studies have shown that reusable plastic water bottles can leak chemicals into your water when the water is left in the bottle for 24 hours. Whereas you can prevent drinking harmful chemicals by choosing a stainless-steel reusable water bottle instead.
Bar soaps
Body wash comes in large plastic bottles that take way more power to recycle than small cardboard boxes. That’s why bar soaps are the perfect alternative to body gel wash as it serves the same purpose but don’t sit in nasty plastic. Instead, it comes in a small cardboard box that is easily recycled and don’t leak chemicals into your soap.
Likewise, if you would like to prevent even more plastic bottles filling up your recycling bin, shampoo bar soaps are a great option as well. They also just come in small recyclable boxes. Check out the latest bar shampoos here.
Shopping with a little bag for your loose veggie
Stores provide small thin plastic bags to place loose fruits and vegetables in so that they don’t roll around in your trolley. However, if you think about how many of those small thin plastic bags are being used once and then thrown away, you would realize just how much soft plastic is going into our landfill just by using those bags alone.
One easy way to decrease your use of soft plastics is by taking two or three of your own reusable fruit and veggie bags into the store with you.
Here are some of our favourites:
Reusable Coffee Mug
New Zealand alone uses 295 million beverage cups a year. Which means too many non-recyclable plastic cups are being thrown into our landfill at a high rate.
We can change this by making a small change to our everyday routine, one being, asking your local coffee shop to pour your drink into your reusable coffee mug.
Most coffee stores now have reusable coffee mugs you can buy and use over and over again in their store.
This isn’t a big change for you, but if everyone does it, we will prevent millions of single use beverage cups being thrown away.
Plant based bin bags
Bin bags make up a large amount of the plastic that almost every household uses. Unfortunately, these are essential for the home and without them taking out the rubbish becomes very messy. Although, we have found a great alternative; Plant based bin bags!
These do the same job as a normal plastic bin liner but are bio degradable, planet friendly.
To learn more about this topic go here.
So, there you have it, our top 5 small changes you can make around your home to reduce your plastic use and waste. Remember starting with small changes may not seem like it makes a difference but overtime it does. Even making even one of these changes will make a difference.
