How to Waste Less Plastic This Summer
After this miserable year at a terrible time in human history, you are right to welcome the summer with an explosion of joy and celebration. But unfortunately, summer is also usually accompanied by an explosion of trash, plastic waste and other disposables that will do nothing but smother the planet the rest of the time, and we already have a president to take care of that for us.
I understand that all summer trappings are adorned with waste that is easy to overlook: you need a straw through which you can sip frozen drinks, the morning cold brew is served in a plastic glass, the hot July sun will make you look for liquids in the water. plastic bottles and all your gender-focused picnics / picnics / parties tend to accumulate disposable cups and utensils faster than horrific news messages accumulating on your phone.
Photos from this recent National Geographic article on the absurd proliferation of plastic waste should be enough to shock you and give a damn; it is also to be expected that the amount of plastic entering the oceans will increase tenfold over the next seven years . We will literally swim in it soon, and some countries of the world are already swimming in it. But if not, let me at least appeal to your sense of summer style or, if not, your summer budget. Here’s how to make summer waste-free – or at least plastic-free.
Get ready for doomsday, but for summer
Doomsday survivors have their own handbags, which have everything they need to survive an increasingly likely apocalypse. Rip a page out of their paranoid guide and prepare a summer vacation package to help you cut down on waste. It should have things like sunscreen (use one that doesn’t kill coral reefs !); portable picnic silverware; frisbee or cards or any other entertainment that suits you; Beach towel; emergency supply of grass; aspirin; bicycle repair kit, etc., as well as most of the items listed below. You are now ready to fly whenever you want. If you have a car, always keep a bag in it.
This summer should be as spontaneous and impetuous as an afternoon thunderstorm. Yes, the joys of the modern world means you can buy whatever you need from CVS, the wine cellar, or the boardwalk. But these are usually disposable items, meant for disposable people having one-time experiences that usually involve some sadness of one-time use (truckers, newly divorced, reckless psychopaths, teenagers). Planning ahead can help you avoid plastic wrapped sandwiches, styrofoam disposable refrigerators, those damn plastic water bottles. Sorry for the crappy motto “Mom’s bathroom is art”, but this summer it is worth remembering about it: “Ferment only footprints in the sand.”
Take a foldable, reusable tote bag and keep it with you at all times.
America, we put you in this circle of love and friendship today to tell you: you have a problem with a plastic bag and you need intervention. Plastic bag bans and fees are in force nationwide, but only you can truly curb this addiction. The medium bag is used up for 12 minutes before being discarded . They are difficult to recycle, and most people don’t do it anyway, so they end up in trash cans, get stuck in trees, clog storm drains, and float out into the oceans, where they choke your favorite fish and function. the rest of the time as plastic trash. In just 12 minutes of use! On top of that, they just carry the groceries awful.
Instead, get yourself a somewhat foldable tote bag like this , the kind that crunch into little balls and fit into summer bags. (I don’t even speak to you if you have a car: if you have a car and it doesn’t have reusable bags ready for every shopping trip, you’re a veritable ghoul.)
Also repeat this phrase over and over in your head until it engages in your brain like a phone number: “I don’t need a bag.” Say this automatically every time you check out. Because if you don’t, the cashier will absentmindedly wrap your one lime in four plastic bags and you probably won’t bother to stop them.
But not you, the waste-free summer warrior, you bravely stand in the way, declaring “I don’t need a bag,” and then look around your body / bag / summer bag until you find a place to store your purchases. Maybe you even have two hands that you can use.
Buy a good water bottle and keep it with you
A good water bottle is worth 1 billion times the investment. It will remind you to stay hydrated, a basic function of human existence for which plain, free water, not vitamin water or sports drinks, is the best treatment. It will also remind you that a plastic water bottle is a highly inefficient way of delivering water as you need more than one bottle to hydrate properly. Also, don’t forget that water is free anytime, anywhere, and that running water is a goddamn miracle of modern life.
You may be asking yourself: how bad can it be to throw away a bottle of water ? Answer: very bad! We now use 1 million bottles of water per minute worldwide, and 91 percent of them are not recyclable. Another reminder that we live in a developed country where water flows for free everywhere (except in places like Flint, a terrible embarrassment for a country that just wants to show you how blessed you should feel with access to clean water).
Buy reusable grocery bags
Seasonal eating is a key aspect of reducing waste in your day-to-day life, and summer is a great reward for that, but that doesn’t mean you have to wrap fresh fruit or berries in a plastic sarcophagus every time. to the grocery store. A set of three of these bags will set you back about $ 12, last forever, and you can still weigh your dosage without adding extra ounces.
Choose your summer cup
The Summer Cup is needed to open one of the main aspects of the season: drinking outside in public places. Like the Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , a real summer cup will bring you life (alcoholic drinks), a false disposable cup will take it from you (smother the planet with plastic until your face fades like old Nazi bullshit).
Alcohol compliance laws vary from state to state, but generally, if you drink from a cup that is not the original container of your drink, you are immune to retaliation. So get a versatile summer cup and store it in your summer bag. It could be the new Batman Forever Taco Bell cup still in your closet, or a cup from the dollar store, or one of those $ 12 souvenir cups that you immediately regretted when you bought it at a baseball game. Pour your beer, wine or cocktail in there and enjoy the fact that you don’t have to send more Solo cups to the landfill.
You will need a good and durable cooler
It doesn’t have to be a hard cooler, but it should be big enough, at least for beers and sandwiches for two – always open up your summer to the possibility of friendship outside of yourself. Do not, under any circumstances, purchase an expanded polystyrene cooler. These are the ones you see smashed to pieces at the end of a beach day next to a trash can on the beach, their lifespan is shorter than that of mayflies, but their waste lasts for hundreds of years . In any case, coolers can in principle be backpacks .
Carry a sweat rag with you
I recently moved on to the concept of a summer sweat rag, but, reader, it changed my wet, ever-damp life. In the summer you need to be constantly wet: sweat, occasional drops on your neck, which, you hope, from the air conditioner, sometimes a teenager throws a balloon with water in your direction, shouting “OLD Ass”.
Keep a bandana or something stylistically appropriate for your summer holiday in your back pocket or summer bag – something you can use to get your forehead wet or dry your hands. That’s roughly $ 2 at your local thrift store, and it saves you the hassle of wasting a bundle of napkins from every coffee shop you walk past with your ghoulish, sweaty body.
Just buy a reusable cold brew mug.
You have a cold beer addiction and should treat it like this: at least use good products. Anyone who has worked in a coffee shop for more than a day has witnessed this phenomenon: someone orders a cold coffee to go, then drinks it before they leave, and throws the cup in the trash before they even reach the front door. Plastic turned out to be completely unnecessary, it turns out! Many of the plastic glasses you get from Starbucks, and the like, are made from # 5 plastic (which you can check on the bottom of the glass), which is increasingly used in recycling programs (check with your city’s regulations to be sure).
But just grab something like the Klean Kanteen reusable coffee mug that you can also reuse in the scary winter for hot coffee. This will keep the drink cold and cut down on plastic consumption. In addition, many coffee shops offer discounts for using your own cup; if yours is not, tell them what they should!
If you MUST use a portable cup, at least avoid using a lid, straw, and plastic stirrer. Which brings us to:
If you need a straw, buy a reusable straw (yes, a damn reusable straw)
That’s right, I’m going for your straw. Straws is a huge scam run by Big Plastic to make you forget that you have lips and that gravity exists. We use 500 MILLION straws a day in this country; that’s 182 BILLION straws a year; that’s enough to wrap the earth in straws nearly 900 times a year – and that’s just straws from America. You have one pair of lips that is enough to wrap the Earth zero times. So consider if the difference is worth it. If you need a straw, grab a reusable stainless steel straw and put it in your summer bag. They cost $ 10 for a set of four and last forever.
Buy a bunch of silverware from a thrift picnic store.
Some conservationists recommend that you use disposable, biodegradable wood or bamboo dishes instead of wasteful plastic, but this tree-clinging salad lover calls it bullshit too. They are made from trees that require large amounts of fossil fuels to be demolished and transported. Instead, just go to your local thrift store and buy a bunch of steel cutlery that you’re not interested in. Thrift stores have baskets of them, and they are perfect for use as round silverware in the outdoor food season, better than non – recyclable plastic tableware floating in the ocean .
If all of this isn’t enough to make you think about reducing waste, try collecting all the plastic you use in a day, drain it into the tub, and try a relaxing bath. This is pretty disgusting! This is what happens to our oceans, and we love the oceans. Only you can prevent plastic oceanic garbage islands this summer, friends.