By Severio Martin
You’ve probably heard all the statistics about plastic by now. Things like by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish and people ingest about a credit card’s worth of plastic a week. There’s also the claim that less than a fifth of the plastic we produce gets recycled.
While those are some serious claims, what should a college student do about it? You’re probably not going to solve the problem on your own, but below are three ways you can reduce the amount of plastic waste you produce!
1. Nab a reusable water bottle.
Did you know that the average 16 ounce plastic water bottle is about .67 ounces of plastic? That’s not a lot of plastic, but it adds up over time. Southern Virginia University has several water bottle refill stations on campus that have refilled the equivalent of about 230,000 water bottles — about 9600 pounds of plastic. Every 24 plastic water bottles we avoid using comes out to about a pound of plastic saved!
2. Change your gift-wrapping strategy.
Christmas is approaching and while the tradition of wrapping presents is great, (and ripping them open on Christmas Day is great fun) a lot of wrapping papers aren’t recyclable because they’re coated in plastic. Choose 100% recyclable wrapping paper, or opt for gift-bags that can be reused for next year as well. You could even hide presents instead of wrapping them; how about a Christmas treasure hunt?
3. Take your plastic grocery bags to the recycling bins at Walmart.
It’s estimated that Americans use about 14 billion plastic bags a year, but only recycle about 1% of those bags. That’s a lot of un-recycled bags. Take whatever excess grocery bags you have to the bag-recycling bins at Walmart. They’ll get processed and turned into plastic lumber for use in park benches and other things. That’s a lot better than them just ending up in a landfill somewhere!
None of these suggestions are new, but they are effective ways to reduce our overall plastic waste generation. Hopefully these suggestions are useful for you!
Reduce and Recycle: Southern Virginia Style! was originally published in The Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.