be the change!

It’s actually quite easy. Order your drink without straw or plastic stirring thing. Refuse the bag if you only bought a few things. Use wax wraps instead of plastic bags. Don’t buy convenience food, prepare your snack at home and carry it multi use containers. Even if you make sure your plastic ends up in a proper recycling facility, it’s still better to avoid using it, for your health and saving resources.

Nowadays plastic is omnipresent and only very few can handle to live without – I’m not one of them. But I try to reuse what can be reused. I’m talking about bags and bottles, but also not buying new plastic “rubbish” when not needed.

recycle

When you dispose, make sure valuable material like PET or aluminum or many others are recycled properly. In many cases new resources can be saved when PET bottles turn into ski jackets or aluminium tins become engine parts. A tiny bit more effort for you, but the impact on our environment is massive.

Micro fibers are a massive problem for our planet. When you wash your synthetic clothes, countless microfibers find their way, even through cleaning facilities, into our oceans. Buy bio clothes instead of synthetic. Did you know that even zoo plankton ingested micro fibers? Very scary, because they are the bottom of our food chain.

Make sure your cosmetics do not contain micro beads. Micro beads are often used in peeling creams or tooth pastes. Also some creams contain, or even are liquid plastic.

don’t flush down contact lenses

Don’t be lazy and flush your contact lenses down the sink, put them in a bin. Even if you live in a country with water recycling facilities, because lenses fall apart and go through the filter systems. A recent study in the US esimate, that 6-10 metric tons end up at sea, only from the USA.

Letting balloons go on wedding or sports event might provide the audience with a few minutes of joy. Is it really worth it? Because once the balloons are gone, the problem only starts. It seriously harms wildlife. Even bio degradable products are a big problem. Read here why. Don’t let them go anymore – and tell your friends to do the same.

The amount of butts thrown away in nature is immense, and most of them are not bio degradable – and if, they still take “forever” to decompose, because they’d need industrial compost facilities with high temperatures. As a result, even in the Artic ice remainders can be found. So don’t be lazy, carry a pocket ash tray and make sure they don’t end up in our environment.

For almost every product there is a better alternative. Looking at cotton buds, why to buy the ones with the plastic pipe instead of the paper version? Cotton buds just as example, but in general be wise and think about the environment when you decide about your next product.

Spread the word. Education is key to change people’s behavior. Some are ignorant and some just don’t know- so don’t be shy to tell them. And even the ignorant might change if you tell them often enough. 🙂