10 Ways to reduce Plastic Consumption

10 Easy Ways to Reduce Plastic Waste

By Nasly Duarte 

1. Refill Your Container through REFILLEMPIRE.  Reuse Reuse Recyle Refill is a unique form of using waist. Using advanced high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment. RRRR’s project has the potential to radically improve environmental well-being. RRRR empowers Americas’s to refill containers that will end up in landfills. 

2. Eat fresh foods. Here’s an idea…drastically reduce or eliminate all processed foods. Not only is it better for your health, but better for the environment. The less processed foods we eat, the less waste we throw away with paper and plastic packaging.

3. Start toting around a stainless steel or even better, glass water bottle.According to the Americans purchased 31 BILLION bottles of water in 2006. Sad to say that only 10% of that 31 billion was recycled. Which means that nearly 28 billion water bottles are floating around in our landfills. Using a resuable stainless steel or glass water bottle that you fill with properly filtered water is an easy, economical and sustainable way to drastically cut down on plastic consumption.

4. Bring canvas bags to the grocery store. One of the easiest and most convenient ways to cut down on plastic bag and paper bag consumption. In some countries, like Japan, stores will actually charge you a small fee to use plastic bags, a practice I feel we should adopt to help encourage the use of canvas bags.

5. Skip on putting all your produce in those little plastic baggies. This is huge source of waste that I don’t think most of us even pay attention to. If you’re anything like me, the majority of your groceries are veggies and fruit. And just think about how much plastic we waste by putting a couple of apples, a tomato and a cucumber in one of those little baggies. Put your produce directly into your canvas bag while you shop. But, don’t forget to thoroughly wash your produce when you get home, especially since they’ll be sitting naked on the conveyor belt.

6. Choose paper or glass packaging over plastic packaging. Buying eggs? Choose the cardboard egg carton over the plastic. Laundry detergent? Buy the cardboard box over the plastic dispenser. Soap? Choose bar soap over liquid in bottles.

7. Replace your tupperware with glassware containers. Glass containers are so much cooler than tupperware for many reasons 1) You’re not as likely to lose a glass container than you are a cheap plastic one. 2) You can cook, store and reheat in a glass container. 3) They don’t stain like plastic tupperware if you put spaghetti sauce in it. 4) No icky toxic chemicals will leak into your food.

8. Forget buying another bottle of lotion. Use coconut oil (sold in a glass bottle, of course) for a skin moisturizer instead. Coconut oil is a safe, natural and chemical and paraben free moisturizer. Gently melt a tablespoon in a small saucepan and use as an overall body moisturizer. Here’s a link to my favorite brand of coconut oil by Tropical Traditions (OK, I’m a little biased that it’s from the Philippines too!)

9. Buy in bulk and bring in your own papers bags or storage containers if you can.Not only does buying in bulk save a ton of money, but you also cut down on unneccsary plastic packaging. Nuts, beans, rice, spices and legumes are items that are great buying in bulk.

10. Choose wax paper or glass containers instead of Ziplock baggies. Pretty self-explanatory.

11. Use brown grocery bags instead of plastic garbage bags for your trash. There probably isnt’ a house in America that doesn’t have a pantry, closet, or storage space filled with folded up brown paper bags. Instead of buying the white plastic garbage bag

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