As an individual striving to live a healthy and fun life while also being environmentally conscious, I hope to impart the wisdom that I’ve gathered on the internet to help you learn how to practically reduce your carbon footprint.
This week – bring your own bag with you to the store! Even though it feels better using paper than plastic at the grocery store, it turns out that both plastic and paper bags have the same overall impact on the environment. Even though paper bags are biodegradable, the amount of energy it takes to process the materials for a paper bag is about equivalent to the plastic that will sit in the environment for hundreds of years.
Considering that the average American uses 900+ plastic bags a year, and that only 1% actually recycle them, where are all the plastic bags going?? The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. (video) Currents in the pacific ocean have corralled so much plastic that the pieces of plastic outnumbers the wildlife (zooplankton) 6 to 1.
The great news is that this can easily be fixed! Bring your own bag – be it a tote bag, a bookbag, anything – and we can hopefully have oceans (mostly) free of debris for generations to come.
