According to www.strawlessocean.com, Americans use over 500 million straws every day, and most of those end up in our oceans, polluting the water and killing marine life. To help combat this problem, the City of Seattle has started a campaign, called Strawless In Seattle, to remove plastic straws from the waste stream. In addition to simply not using straws, they have identified a number of alternatives to plastic straws including straws made of paper, steel, glass, or bamboo, all of which are now commercially available.
Ask your server to hold the plastic straws to help reduce plastic waste in oceans.
According to www.strawlessocean.com, Americans use over 500 million straws every day, and most of those end up in our oceans, polluting the water and killing marine life. To help combat this problem, the City of Seattle has started a campaign, called Strawless In Seattle, to remove plastic straws from the waste stream. In addition to simply not using straws, they have identified a number of alternatives to plastic straws including straws made of paper, steel, glass, or bamboo, all of which are now commercially available. Single-use plastic bags are a major source of water pollution and are banned or taxed in a growing number of cities and countries.
The Center for Biological Diversity reports that the average American family takes home almost 1,500 plastic shopping bags per year. Single-use disposable bags are used on average for only 12 minutes, and only 1% of them are returned to stores for recycling. Target alone gives away enough single-use plastic bags annually to wrap around the earth seven times. A growing number of cities, states and foreign countries are acting to ban or tax single-use plastic bags in order to reduce pollution – especially water pollution. California was the first US state to enact a statewide ban, and that ban was confirmed in a November 2016 ballot referendum. In Washington, DC, the Department of Energy and Environment determined that single-use plastic bags were one of the major sources of pollution in the Anacostia River. In 2010, a 5-cent bag tax was introduced to encourage consumers to reduce their use of disposable plastic or paper bags, with proceeds going to fund clean-up efforts. Bag usage in the district dropped from about 22 million per month to 3 million in the first month the fee was in effect, according to the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue. Non-partisan studies have shown that bag bans do help to reduce energy use, waste and litter. Yet, three states (Arizona, Idaho, Missouri) have enacted legislation to prevent municipalities from enacting plastic bag bans or taxes. Of course, by shopping with reusable bags, individual consumers can modify their own behavior to reduce the problem of plastic waste, irrespective of local regulations. Avoid body washes, exfoliators, and other skin products that contain plastic microbeads, which endanger lakes, oceans, and waterways. Photo Credit: totoronoir, Flickr |
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