How to live without plastic?
You use it every day without even noticing it. It makes your life easier but harms you and the planet, what is it? The answer to this riddle is plastic. This material is completely malleable so that it can be transformed into all kinds of solid objects. Some examples of these solid objects that you use every day are plastic bags, pens or cell phones! The following photo presents common plastic objects that every person has in their houses. Now, imagine that we are 7.5 Billion People and each person has 2 plastic objects. That means 15 Billion plastic objects, without counting those that we had thrown away.
A few people know the history of this material. Synthetic plastic was invented by Leo Baekeland in 1907, and renovated by Hermann Staudinger and Herman Mark. It had an incredible success in the early 20th due to its big production and low cost to manufacture. However, little by little people realized the slow decomposition rate. Since then, a lot of people have been fighting to reduce its use and replace it with new products. The following video presents a new type of product that could replace plastic plates.
As mentioned in the previous video, Leaf Plates are not made out of plastic or chemicals. Although there are many questions unanswered such as would this company be able to provide to the entire world as many plates as needed, it is inspiring that there are companies thinking about the world.
Furthermore, we need the support of companies but we, consumers, need to change our consumption habits about this material. By clicking here you can enter into a LIVE counter of plastic bags. When I created this blog post it was about 1,067,491,500,093 plastic bags used. Is there a big difference when you clicked on it? If so, then it is time to change our actions. Here are 9 tips to use less plastic in our everyday lives. Many blogs provide a lot of tips and tricks in order to decrease our consumption of this material.
Hopefully, this blog post has inspired to change your actions and support those organizations that are making an effort to change the world.
Thank you for reading!
Maria.
Learn more about how to live without plastic in the two following links:
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I’ve had a look at the leaf plates previously and love the idea. While they are currently still too expensive to be used and thrown away. I think once they get a more efficient supply chain they will be able to lower the price and the plates can become a normal consumer product. Isn’t it so crazy how much plastic is used especially in supermarkets! I was in safeway yesterday and the bananas came with additional plastic wrapped around them. If only bananas had some sort of natural packaging already!! 😀
The amount of plastic we use every day is absurd. Almost every room in our houses have at least one or two products with plastic parts. This has become such a huge problem that we can find so many companies out there that are working on new products that will help substitute plastic products like the leaf plates you mentioned. However, I believe we still have so much to go before being able to substitute plastic completely since it has almost unlimited different uses. It is very unlikely that we can find a product that is as cheap as plastic. I think that the repurposing and recycling of plastic objects is going to be the way to go. Once we figure out how to have such processes release as few contaminants as possible we will be heading the right way since we already have enough plastic for all future generations, as long as we recycle it all and recollect what has been thrown out.