 
Wednesday, February 12th, 2020
Hello my loves, welcome back to my blog! Today's topic is... New year, new me. Sadly 2019 has come to an end. So many things happened! Cactus plastic was developed in Mexico, Ethiopia planted 350 million trees in one day, and so much more. We made progress as a country, but now we need to focus on ourselves. So how can I help? I'm just one person. How can I make a difference? Well, if everyone that thought that actually did something, we could make a huge difference. Today we will start with the zero-waste lifestyle. We will then talk about what you can do in your classroom and finally move on to what you can do in your household. At the end I will have a topic on what to do if you have strict parents or don't have the money to do this. Without further ado, let's begin! So what is the zero-waste lifestyle? As you can probably tell by the name, it is the concept of making as little trash as possible. Like all big transitions, you have to start small. I am going to break up this lifestyle into different groups depending on where you are in the transition. Some people are slower at big changes than others. That's okay! If you already do all the things in a certain group, just skip to the next. Let's begin with group one; eliminating any major polluters. These are things like styrofoam, single use plastic, Oil, ect. The easiest to stop using is styrofoam. You don't see it much anymore, since it has been replaced with better things. Still, try to stay clear of buying things packed with styrofoam. The less we support companies who do this, the less pollution we will have. The next thing that we need to stop using is single use plastic!!! This includes toothbrushes, plastic grocery bags, bubble rap, plastic cutlery, plastic straws, ect. I am going to help you find an alternative to these. First, plastic toothbrushes. You may be thinking, but I need to brush my teeth! It's personal hygiene! Which I know. There actually bamboo or cornstarch toothbrushes that you can buy. They are exactly like regular plastic toothbrushes except they are 100% biodegradable! The only problem is that most of them come in plastic packaging. It is recyclable, but only 60% of plastic actually gets recycled. If you absolutely can't find one that isn't packaged in plastic, just buy one that is. It's better than having a non-biodegradable toothbrush. The next ones are pretty easy to avoid. For plastic bags, some grocery stores carry paper bags. If your's does not, just invest in some reusable ones. They are pretty cheap. For those who know who know how to knit, crochet, sew, ect. You could make your own bags. For those of you who didn't know, when picking out stuff in the grocery store that isn't already bagged like fruits, veggies, nuts, bread, ect. You don't have to use the containers provided. You can use your own. If you are using a glass jar, weigh the jar first and then weigh the jar with the food. Then, you won't have to pay extra for the weight of the jar. The next one is bubble wrap. It's pretty simple to avoid this one. Just don't order stuff online. If you don't want to do that, just request from the place that uses bubble wrap, to not have bubble wrap. Now are plastic cutlery and plastic straws. For my younger readers, cutlery is the stuff you use to eat (spoons, forks, knives, chopsticks, ect.). Just use metal or wooden ones. Now for the hardest thing to eliminate, oil. We use this a lot. I'm not talking about vegetable oil. I'm talking about fossil fuels and palm oil. Fossil fuels are the things we use to power cars, planes, and space shuttles. This is going to be hard to eliminate because of the amount of people using them. Let's start with the simplest, cars. Of course the cheaper option is not using a car as much. You could bike, roller skate, roller blade, walk, even ride a unicycle. But what about those who love to travel? Those who want to explore, not just stay in the same area like they did thousands of years ago. You could take a boat, but that still won't help you travel everywhere. Well a second option is buying an electric car. The problem is that they're expensive, and if you're out travelling the world, the chances are you don't have enough money to buy one of them. The same thing goes for aeroplanes. Try to stick to better alternatives like going by boat, or electric car. Just make sure the boat you're taking isn't a big polluter. In my next blog entry, I will tell all about the environmental problems with space exploration and group two of going zero-waste. I will add some pictures that can give you some zero-waste tips. Bye everyone! xoxo |
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