This month is Plastic Free July. Hands up if you’re still using single-use items! I know! Me too! My lifetime goal is to eliminate single-use items. So, I’m starting again … small. Changing one habit at a time. And I’ve got the whole month of July to adapt. Note to self, carry a keep-cup, take reusable bags to the markets and refuse over-packaging (easier said than done).
To drive home how much rubbish we can generate, check out Californian photographer Gregg Segal. Gregg photographs people surrounded by one week’s worth of their rubbish. The subjects were asked to collect and store their rubbish for a week and then bring it to Gregg’s house. If you’ve never thought about how much rubbish you throw away then this is an great reminder of the amount of waste a human can collects in just seven days. [Ref. Gregg Segal. Seven Days of Garbage].
It is heart breaking to hear that shearwater birds on Lord Howe Island off the New South Wales coastline, regularly consume plastics, with scientists saying that plastic ingestion probably starts at hatching. The plastics are being ingested when the parents collect oceanic food, such as squid and pick up broken pieces of plastic floating in the water and washed up on the sand to feed to their young. [Ref ABC Adrift Lab]. This information alone should help us all make better plastic-free decisions.
If you can imagine a piece of plastic on the beach, it’s quite sharp and brittle. Imagine that plastic continuously digging into the really soft, fragile tissue of the stomach over and over again. That’s going to cause a lot of injury.
Ms Charlton-Howard | Researcher | Adrift Lab
To help us live a plastic free life, check out the website at Plastic Free July. Take up their challenge, sign the pledge and use their wealth of resources to help find solutions to plastic pollution – at home, at work, events and at school.
Writer: Colleen B. Filippa
With a background in Environmental Science from Melbourne University, Colleen is the Founding Director of Fifteen Trees. In 2009, after 20 years in secondary and tertiary education institutions, Colleen left the classroom to start the company. Fifteen Trees is a social enterprise assisting individuals and companies to reduce their carbon footprint by supporting community groups such as Landcare, and environmental networks.
