How YOU Can Make a Change
So I’ve talked a lot about ocean pollution and how terrible it is for everyone involved, from the animals from us humans, but I haven’t talked a lot about what people can do to take steps to make sure that any future damage is prevented, so this week I’m going to talk some about what people can do to help.
First thing is to replace disposable water bottles, utensils, and other disposable items with reusable ones. When you stop to think about how many disposable things you use everyday you can see how there might be a problem with plastic in the oceans. Even if you only cut out a few items and start using reusable items to replace them, that could make a huge difference. You might think it’s really inconvenient, but its really not. It can also be a lot cheaper!! I stopped using paper plates and buying disposable water bottles about a year ago and it was surprisingly easier and definitely more cost efficient than I ever would have thought.
Next thing is start using reusable bags instead of the plastic ones when shopping. The reusable bags are always on sale at grocery stores and now at most stores really, but even when people buy them they tend to just use them for the one shopping trip and them forget about them. It is estimated that the average American uses and throws away about 10 plastic bag a week. Just think if everyone replaced even one of those with a reusable bag what a difference that could make!!
This next thing is something that even I was a little surprised to find out is something that leads to ocean pollution, but stop using personal care products that have microbeads in them (microbeads are the little beads that you mostly find in body washes and face washes that claim to exfoliate, I had to think for a while about what they were when I first read it so I figured I would help you guys out in case you were in the same boat as me). The little beads can easily travel through drainage systems, animals eat them, and then the toxins get into their digestive systems and cause a lot of problems. As I’ve talked about before that then travels up the food chain to us and that’s also not good for us either. One tube of face wash can easily contain about 300,000 of the microbeads. This change to me is one of the simplest to make. There are hundreds of options when it comes to these kinds of personal products that it’s very easy to find an alternative to products with microbeads.
The next suggestion I found is the most challenging to me, and honestly something I probably couldn’t commit do doing all the time, and it was to make your own beauty and other products yourself. Being able to cut down on the packaging for that stuff can really make a huge difference. There are a lot of recipes online about how to make your own products, and making them doesn’t look all that difficult. If someone really wanted to it would be challenging, but not impossible to live a waste-free life style. Plus making your own products could be kind of fun, and make you feel a bit like a scientist. In addition it could also be a way to save a little bit of money. To prove it can be done 23-year-old Lauren Singer tried these techniques out and because of it she could store the amount of waste she’s produced in the last two years in a single mason jar. Talk about creating a very minimal amount of waste!
By making even some of these simple changes it can make a huge difference in the amount of plastic that gets into the oceans and causes marine life to get sick and even die. Most of these things (all but the last one really) are things that could easily be done and you would not even notice that much of a change to your lifestyle. Even if everyone only did one of these suggested things it would make a huge difference in how much plastic can get into the oceans, and it would also probably propel you to want to try to do more to help out the cause. If you can do even one of these things the marine life would surely thank you…and in the long run you’d thank yourself.
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/marine-species-extinction-and-plastic-pollution/