What chemicals are in your household products?
How environmentally friendly are your choices of: dishwashing and laundry liquids or powders, disinfectant (white vinegar is a natural disinfectant for kitchen benches and a great window cleaner), shampoo and conditioners, body lotions, deodorant and toothpaste (organic products are great for your health). Check the fine print on labels when purchasing.
How much food packaging do you throw out weekly?
There's simply no need to use plastic bags anymore, one carry bag will last you as long as it takes the billions of tonnes of oil based plastic bags to break down in our environment...so get some!!
Do you shop at the supermarket more than markets? Chances are your spending hundreds on the advertising packaging of heavily processed foods..which aren't good for your health. See if you can go a single week without purchasing one plastic packaged food...not easy! Set yourself a limit to one or two and will find yourself forced into eating food that is much better for your health...now who'd want that!
Biodegradable plastics are available but many companies are failing to take the option because of $$$$. Question whether the milk or softdrinks you buy are made from biodegradable plastic, choose glass instead -it's recyclable. Many coffee cups which are made from cardboard are lined with plastic/polymer substances too. It would seem our fast-food-takeaway-throw-away culture combined with over-production is not helping :/
If only we could boycott these companies to let them know we won't buy their products at all unless they switch to ethical alternatives....
AKA trash vortexes, these accumulation zones for human material waste obviously affects marine life in many frightening ways.... If you think it's easy to 'look the other way' while marine life suffers deformity and death....consider the way plastics break down into toxin absorbing 'nurdles'. These highly toxic man-made krill like particles are ingested by feeders from top to bottom -infecting the entire food chain from sand worms to sharks and YOU.
We must consciously begin to reduce our output and impact. How much food do you buy comes with plastic packaging? Do you use plastic bags? Shipping containers fall off ships regularly all around the world...do you buy local or imported goods? How can we get companies to change the packaging materials they use? Seek alternatives and tell your friends....
"In Australia around 1 million tonnes of plastic materials are produced each year and a further 587,000 tonnes are imported. Packaging is the largest market for plastics, accounting for over a third of the consumption of raw plastic materials – Australians use 6 billion plastic bags every year!
We must consciously begin to reduce our output and impact. How much food do you buy comes with plastic packaging? Do you use plastic bags? Shipping containers fall off ships regularly all around the world...do you buy local or imported goods? How can we get companies to change the packaging materials they use? Seek alternatives and tell your friends....
"In Australia around 1 million tonnes of plastic materials are produced each year and a further 587,000 tonnes are imported. Packaging is the largest market for plastics, accounting for over a third of the consumption of raw plastic materials – Australians use 6 billion plastic bags every year!
Plastic packaging provides excellent protection for the product, it is cheap to manufacture and seems to last forever. Lasting forever, however, is proving to be a major environmental problem. Another problem is that traditional plastics are manufactured from non-renewable resources – oil, coal and natural gas." (Source: NOVA Science in the News. Making Packaging Greener: Biodegradable Plastics. Published by the Australian Academy of Science)
- S. Innes