Pientere Potlood Tumblr

“hang out" by Nate Armstrong

These are images of five Earth-harming products we use and absolutely don’t have to. The first being straws and for that matter the lids and cups they come in. Cut back on buy n’go beverages. Schedule time to drink out of a mug or plan ahead to bring your own to-go cup for your daily whatever it is. Each time you drink from a one-time use can, plastic bottle, glass bottle, or paper cup your convenience costs the Earth 350, 450, 1 million, or 20 years respectively to decompose. 

Plastic bags: great for carrying groceries, storing food, and picking up dog-poop but horrible for the environment. It’s bad enough they can take up to 1000 years to decompose, what’s worse is that they kill and kill and kill during this process. Essentially one bag eaten by a turtle decomposes slower than the dead turtle. So another animal, a seagull let’s say, eats the very same bag, harming or killing the seagull too. Again the animal decomposes faster than the bag so the bag goes on wreaking havoc on the wildlife. Huge problem polluting Earth, simple solution: don’t use them. Stop the demand. Buy only what you can carry or take a reusable bag around with you. 

To-go containers of all shapes and sizes are utilized for leftovers, soups, warm drinks, chicken eggs, and meals on the run. STOP IT! Order what you can eat or pack food to-go in a napkin or tupperware you brought from home. Stay and eat from actual dishware rather than justifying the harm to our planet with your busy runaround lifestyle. Tell restauranteurs that you’d pay a dime more to have paper to-go products. Be willing to do this. Get your meat directly from the butcher so it’s wrapped in paper rather than styrofoam!!?!

The plastic spoon’s lifespan was the first Tumblr post that pushed my brain off its high horse and woke me up to my own environmental hypocrisy. My thinking used to be “spoon drops on the floor, toss it, get another.” “Surely my meal needs a spoon and fork and a knife, get one of each.” NO! NO! NOOOOOO! Doing this means that my one measly meal will take multiple human lifetimes for yet another piece of trash to decompose. Again, not worth it. Now I wait to eat until I’m around reusable silverware. I pour things directly into my mouth so I don’t have to spoon them in, use my clean hands, just not the plastic spoon. Any why would I when there’s spoons you can eat. 

I’m guilty of wearing disposable pads and tampons. It’s hard enough to bleed and cramp and bleed let alone care about the long-term effects of menstruation. When I’m bleeding I don’t even want be bothered with it so thinking about my period’s blood absorbed into a sanitary napkin for 32 generations is not a pressing thought. Until I learned what these items do to my body and the Earth. Heart-breaking. Fortunately like all of the aforementioned products there are reusable alternatives! We can do better. 

These are only five of the changes I’ve made in my life but they’re a big deal, especially if you follow suit. Eating no or little meat is another change I’ve made. Same with buying local. The biggest way any of us can impact the planet though is not having kids we don’t want. Have children if that’s something you want to do and can do well. Teach them how to make environmentally conscious decisions. Raise them to blog about their passions. Otherwise, for the sake of the child and your planet, use birth control: the cheapest, most effective planet saving solution we have. 

Happy Earth Day!

Additional Resources:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/bags/

http://futurism.com/plastic-decomposition/

FLUFFIG page 2

Alyssa Berg

Hohoho, all in good fun.

(via Saturday Morning Cartoons: Baopu #15) by Yao Xiao