Action post 2

Hi! Just a quick recap for those of you that haven’t read my action plan, I am going to be coming up with one things I can change in my day to day life to help the environment each week!  I am also going to be logging everything I do into a public Instagram account (@tinylittlechanges)  so that I can share this positive change with others. In my first post, I chose to start using a compost bin. It’s been going well, and it’s actually much easier thatn I thought it would be. These past two weeks, I have chose to eliminate my use of plastic bags and to use a water bottle instead of a plastic bottle.

Why I chose to eliminate plastic bags:

Plastic bags are really harmful for the environment. They…

• Are light weight and easily carried by the wind into oceans or forests
• Clog drainage channels (and could even cause flods)
• Never decompose
• Break into microplastics we can’t see, that end up in our food and are bad for our health
• Are harmful to any animal that may accidently eat one
• Require the burning of fossil fuels in order to be made (contributing to the climate crisis)

So many people use plastic bags, even once they know it is bad for the environment. My family doesn’t throw away our plastic bags, we keep them and try to reuse them. However, we’ve ended up having to many plastic bags, and not enough reasons to use them. That’s why I am going to use reusable fabric bags instead of plastic bags. I think this action is sustainable because it’s something easy that doesn’t require much effort from my part, and doesn’t iconvenience me much, but still makes an impact.

One of the problems I might run into is that it’s easy to forget to bring a reusable bag with you when shopping. In order to avoid this problem, I’m going to keep  two reusable bags in both of my parent’s cars so that we always have a reusable bag with us in case we forget.

Why I chose to eliminate plastic water bottles:

According to MSLK’s Watershed project, 1,500 plastic water bottles are used every second in the US. These plastic bottles are really bad for the environment because they….

• Are hard to dispose of /recycle
• Contain BPA, which is proven to be harmful to our health
• Get carried into the ocean, which affects marine life

Not only are the bottles bad for the environment, but the water inside them is as well.  The process requires 2 gallons of water for every 1 gallon of purified water! I realized that I contribute to this problem, because I rarely bring my own water bottle to school, and I end up using plastic bottles or plastic cups from the cafeteria. Now that I’ve realized how much waste I have been creating, I have decided to use reusable water bottles only. I think this is a sustainable change because it is actually more convinient for me than using plastic bottles. I think the purified water that comes in plastic bottles tastes kind of funny, and I don’t like spending my money on something that comes out of the tap anyways. My only other option would be to use a plastic cup, but the have no lids and I always need to worry about spilling it. But with a reusable water bottle these problems are sovled.

I can’t think of many challenges that would arise while doing this, because it seems pretty straight forward.

That’s it so far! thanks for reading my action post!

Websites used:

10 Reasons Why Should We Ban Plastic Bags

What’s the Problem with Plastic Bottles?