A CALL TO ACTION
Welcome to the second month of our new EARTH SAVERS webpage. AADC is committed to supporting environmental awareness. This new page is the creation of AADC member Jody Brady. Each month she will be giving us information and tips on how to be more friendly to the environment. And we will offer all visitors to this page an opportunity to comment and give your own environmental tips. Scroll down if you would like to comment! Comments are curated and may not appear immediately.
September, 2022
USING LESS PLASTIC
Changing a lifetime of habits is not an easy task, believe me—I feel your pain. But we can all take baby steps, and we need to do it now. If enough people join in the goal to save the Earth, we can make a difference. Humanity did the damage, and now humanity needs to participate in trying to undo that damage and save our beautiful home planet. Our mantra is: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Refuse.”
Let’s start with limiting our use of plastics. (In future articles we will cover using less paper and using less energy.)
Look around your house or a store. Notice how many products come wrapped in plastic. It’s horrifying because this is plastic that is getting used only one time, what is known as “single use plastic.” It gets used once.- then thrown away. But it lasts forever, polluting our world. It especially pollutes our oceans and our beaches, such as the one shown here. Let’s start now to refuse to use items that are wrapped in single use plastic.
Plastic recycling is not working. California’s Attorney General opened an investigation recently into the possible role the country’s largest oil and gas companies played promoting the idea that plastics could be recycled, in an effort to manipulate the public to buy more of it. The Attorney General accused these companies of “a half-century campaign of deception.” For now, the only answer is to use less plastic. You can read more about this here.
If we can all follow through with the items on this list below. we can make a difference. Pick one or two to begin Gradually make them your new daily habits and help the earth.
- Carry reusable shopping bags in your car handy to grab
- Give up bottled water. Carry your own thermos
- Bring your own container for leftovers at a restaurant or for take-out food
- Take a stainless-steel travel mug for coffee or drinks
- Carry reusable utensils and straws
- Eat ice cream in cones instead of single-use-plastic or paper bowls
- Shop local farmers’ markets
- Buy fresh bread in paper bags
- Choose milk in glass bottles
If you’re ready to move past these first baby steps and get really serious, here is a website with 100 suggestions on how to free yourself from plastics. https://myplasticfreelife.com/plasticfreeguide/
GO FOR IT!
“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of a difference you want to make.”
—Jane Goodall