PLASTIC FREE JULY: DAY 15

Day Fifteen:

Are you a slave to consumerism?

In this day and age we are brainwashed into believing we need the latest, up to date gadgets and household items. We live in a consumer society, if it's broken, we don't fix it, we buy a new one. If it's last year's model, it's not good enough. But what happens to all the trashed items that get thrown in a skip and forgotten about? Fortunately, a lot of it gets sorted through and recycled where possible but there is still a large amount landing up in landfill. A lot of perfectly good working items being chucked out too.

Next time you need to buy a new item or replace a non-fixable one, why not look at second-hand items first. Websites like gumtree or ebay as well as many facebook pages such as "buy, sell and swap in Adelaide & surrounding areas", ( or a similar page in your town) have many new & used items advertised every minute of the day. Purchasing items that have been used or are new & unwanted massively reduces the demand on production of new products. If we all made more effort to utilise what is already out there we can hugely reduce the impact of waste that gets sent to landfill.

Fix; Recycle; Upcycle; Sell; Give Away! Try everything before sending to landfill.

Re-think your thinking...

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT...FOR A CHANGE...

Our Plastic Environment Needs to Change

It is no news that the human race is steadily creating a large, negative impact on our environment. Roughly 275million Metric Tons of plastic waste is produced every year, 8million Metric Tons of this lands up in the ocean, killing precious marine life.

So, more recently I have found myself becoming a bit of an Eco-Warrior and have spent the past few weeks researching and learning simple and effective ways to reduce my own personal impact on the environment. I used to think that simple recycling and re-using plastic bags was enough but after looking into it more thoroughly I realised that I was not even recycling 100% correctly and that re-using plastic bags still creates more plastic waste.

My mission now is to try and share some of what I have learned and also to try and encourage others to implement steps towards doing the same.

No matter how small you choose your efforts to be, it will make a difference. During the month of July there is a worldwide initiative, Plastic Free July, to bring awareness to the amount of plastic we consume in our daily lives and how we can reduce the impact of this. It started in Perth as a local community initiative and has spread worldwide since. More info on this initiative can be found here. The FAQ page has some handy answers and tips. You don't have to register if you don't want to, making small changes on your own will still have a huge impact.

I plan to share a useful tip each day of July on our facebook page to help you integrate some easy and effective ways to reduce the use of plastic, particularly single-use plastic, in your life.

So make sure you have liked our page on facebook and hovered over the like button to tick notifications as "on".