It's Plastic Free July!
This month we challenge you to join the #plasticfreejuly global movement where millions of people worldwide will work towards reducing their plastic waste. Together, we can forge cleaner streets, oceans, and communities. Focusing on your plastic use throughout the month will help you better understand your personal plastic consumption and introduce you to great alternatives that can help eliminate waste through July - and beyond!
Over 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year - that's nearly equivalent to the weight of the entire human population. Strikingly, half of that plastic produced is used to create single-use, disposable items. And at least 8 million tons of plastic end up in our oceans each year.
A straw with our iced coffee, a plastic bag to carry our takeout, a wrapper on a candy bar: taken individually, each seems harmless. These modern conveniences are so ubiquitous—and so quickly thrown out—that they hardly register in our minds. But single-use plastics come with a steep environmental price—one that we’ll be paying off for millennia. Our plastic addiction is having a devastating impact on our oceans, our wildlife, and our health.
- Courtney Lindwall, NRDC
This month's challenge is all about reducing your plastic waste. Identifying all the single-use plastic you use, tracking how much of it is in your life, and making an effort week by week to cut down the plastic addiction.
We crafted a worksheet to help you on your plastic-free journey, which you can download below. Start this week by just tallying up how much plastic you use - then each week see if you can get those numbers lower. At the end of the month, hopefully you'll have created better, less plastic-dependent habits!
At the end of the month, send us your completed (or not-so-completed) worksheet using the Submit Your Work Form and we'll add 100 Impact Points to your rewards.
Carrying reusables is a great way to reduce the need for single-use items in your day-to-day life. For the month of July, all of our 'Zero Waste' goods will be on sale, to help encourage our community to ditch the single-use lifestyle.
