World Environment Day – Beat Plastic Pollution!
Happy World Environment Day!
Every year on June 5, we celebrate World Environment Day which is a global environmental awareness day ran by the United Nations. How exciting to have a special day for us to all focus on something so important – our amazing planet and all the ways in which we can help it thrive!
This year the global awareness campaign associated with World Environment Day is to Beat Plastic Pollution and discourage the use of disposable plastic products. Did you know that around the world, one million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute, and up to 5 trillion single-use plastic bags are used every year. In total, 50 percent of all plastic produced is designed to be used only once – and then thrown away! Yikes!
What exactly does the Beat Plastic Pollution campaign aim to do?
The Beat Plastic Pollution campaign is encouraging governments, industry, communities, and individuals worldwide to come together and explore sustainable alternatives and urgently reduce the production and excessive use of single-use plastic polluting our oceans, damaging marine life and threatening human health. In the last decade, we produced more plastic than in the whole last century so it’s more important than ever that we come together to help combat this issue.
What can we do to help?
There are lots of things that you can do to help support this important cause, some examples are:
- Bring your own reusable bags to the supermarket or shops to avoid using disposable plastic bags
- Refuse to use plastic straws or cutlery when you are eating out
- Support businesses that use sustainable, reusable packaging
- Recycle – ensure that you are aware of the correct way to recycle plastics that are used both at home and in the office. This includes separating your soft plastics from hard plastics. Most household recycling bins do not have the ability to recycle the soft plastics, so you can use the REDcycle program to help recycle these type of plastics. Click here to check out our new Range of Soft Plastic Waste Stream Bins
- Join the #BeatPlasticPollution movement. All you need to do is decide on one item of single-use plastic that you will no longer use (ie. a plastic drink bottle), take a photo of yourself with the new reusable item that you are going to replace it with (ie. a aluminium drink bottle), share it to your social media using the hashtag #BeatPlasticPollution #Ecobin and then tag three of your friends to challenge them to do the same within 24 hours. Voila!