10% of all human-generated waste is plastic including personal hygiene products such as pads, panty liners & tampons.
“Beat Plastic Pollution”, the theme for World Environment Day 2018, is a call to action for all of us to come together to combat one of the great environmental challenges of our time. The theme invites us all to consider how we can make changes in our everyday lives to reduce the heavy burden of plastic pollution on our natural places, our wildlife – and our own health. While plastic has many valuable uses, we have become over-reliant on single-use or disposable plastic – with severe environmental consequences. This World Environment Day we’ll be engaging partners from all corners of society and the world to join us in raising awareness and inspiring action to form the global movement needed to beat plastic pollution for good.
Global Plastic Pollution by the Numbers¹:
- Up to 5 trillion plastic bags used each year
- 13 million tonnes of plastic leak into the ocean each year
- 17 million barrels of oil used on plastic production each year
- 1 million plastic bottles bought every minute
- 100,000 marine animals killed by plastics each year
- 100 years for plastic to degrade in the environment
- 90% of bottled water found to contain plastic particles
- 83% of tap water found to contain plastic particles
- 50% of consumer plastics are single use
- 10% of all human-generated waste is plastic including personal hygiene products such as pads, panty liners, tampons and incontinence pads.
What you can do to make a change to #beatplasticpollution
- If you can’t reuse it, refuse it
- Educate others to make the change, each person and each change will make a difference.
- Look for sustainable and reusable alternatives- canvas and reusable bags, stainless steel straws, bring your reusable containers to stores to place produce in, don’t use disposable coffee cups, plates or water bottles and use reusable personal hygiene products and sustainable apparel such as Modibodi underwear, activewear, maternity and swimwear
Source: http://worldenvironmentday.global/
