5 ways to eliminate plastic from your life

1. Say no to plastic cutlery

Whether in a cafe or when ordering in from our favourite restaurants, the only form of cutlery on offer happens to be of plastic. While it’s not easy to plan for every small instance, we can consider having a spoon or a fork in our bags or even a set at our workplaces. A reusable cutlery kit (preferably made with bamboo), in fact, unlike plastic ones, never ends up in the landfill, thereby releasing toxic chemicals. Whereas, it is easy to carry and can be versatile enough to be used for office, takeaways, camping and so on,

2. Say goodbye to bottled water

In the UK alone, 35 million plastic bottles are used every day. While we wrap our heads around digesting that fact, there does exist a plethora of alternatives to cut plastic use in that regard. Be it in the form of carrying stainless steel or glass bottles, or refilling water from various locations, we can contribute to the environment by ditching bottled water for good.

3. Use reusable shopping bags

A reusable shopping bag, as opposed to single use paper or plastic bags can be reused many times and they are indeed just as sturdy as they are made with materials such as jute, cotton, bamboo and more recently hemp. The longer they last, the lower the chances of them ending up in landfills or oceans. Paper bags, although may have a few advantages over plastic ones, the fact also remains that they require a lot of resources to produce and the durability is also very low.

4. Buy unpackaged food items

Supermarkets nowadays are flooded with disposable containers (polystyrene trays, tetra paks, plastic bags, etc.). One of the best ways we can counter that is by purchasing loose products (or unpackaged)- such as fruits and vegetables, meats, pasta, bread, oil, cereals, which can be bought by the kilo or litre. By doing so, we only end up buying what we need and reduce the usage of plastic overall. We even end up saving money in doing so.

5. Avoid using straws

An estimated 500 million plastic straws are used in the US alone, every single day. A majority of them end up eventually in the oceans, disrupting marine life. Therefore, it remains imperative for us to change our habits and reconsider the usage of plastic straws.. The best alternatives however remain in the form of straws made of steel, bamboo or glass, which are reusable and can be easily carried wherever we might need them. While it still remains to be seen how effective the bans on plastic straws will be, the solutions can be easily adopted to preserve the environment.