Decorate your home with nature, not plastic. Use leaves, pine cones, etc. from your yard; potted plants that will last or become gifts; centerpieces of vegetables and fruits (eat them later!).
[For more easy, money-saving, earth-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to www.Smashwords.com/books/view/7000 or your favorite e-book seller and download to your computer or e-book device. Totally free, with no strings attached.]
Here’s a tasty way for you and the earth to chill out: Store refrigerated food in glass, which keeps the food colder longer. Use glass jars you would have discarded rather than oil-based plastic containers you’d buy. A bonus is that when those labels fall off you know what’s in the jar because you can see inside it.
[For more easy, money-saving, earth-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to www.Smashwords.com/books/view/7000, choose a format, and download to your computer or e-book device. Or download a free copy from your favorite e-book seller.]
40,000 garbage trucks filled with plastic = 270,000 tons of it floating around our oceans. That’s what the current estimate is. And that’s a conservative guess, since fish, birds, and other species eat a good amount of it. It’s unsightly and deadly for the critters who eat it or get hopelessly entangled in it. It’s not healthy for humans, either.
This is something to think about next time we’re about to toss a plastic bottle cap, bag, food wrapper, or other item onto the roadway or gutter, where it can wash into the waterways leading to the ocean. Or tossing those items off of a boat or bridge.
The item can’t be that heavy to hold onto until you see the next recycling container.
On the shores of Hawaii, scientists found a brand new rock-type, one that man has made. It’s multi-colored, has a variety of textures, is eroded into a round shape, and is usually 2” to 8” in size. Break down its name—plastiglomerate—and you’ll guess at what it’s made of. Yes, it’s partly plastic. It forms when our garbage plastic melts, then hardens inside the pores of a rock.
How does our discarded plastic get melted? Because the area where the hybrid rock was discovered is remote, campers keep fires going for cooking and heat for the period in which they camp there. Often they think they’re doing a good thing by burning their garbage, much of which contains plastic. The melted plastic seeps into the ground and into rocks.
Makes me wonder how else we’re changing Nature.
Something to think about when tossing out those grocery bags and water bottles: After decades of plastic waste disposal, there is now more plastic than algae in the ocean.
[For more easy, money-saving, Eco-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to www.Smashwords.com/books/ view/7000, choose a format, and download to your computer or e-book device. Or download a free copy from your favorite e-tailer.]
How to save money (personally, as a community, and as a state) and help the environment: watch this two-minute video on plastic to find out and learn what can be done about marine plastic pollution Then sign the petition and let your California lawmakers know you’re in favor of AB521.