10 plastic items you can give up right now

plastic

So much of the plastic we use is completely unnecessary; give up these items and you won't even miss them.

Plastic is so pervasive in our lives that it can hard to understand just what a problem it presents. Without belaboring the point in too many words, consider this:

We make nearly a billion tons of plastic every three years. Which is a less painful way of saying we make nearly 2,000,000,000,000 pounds of plastic every three years. According to researchers, if all the plastic made in the last few decades were cling film, there would be enough to put a layer around the whole Earth. With current trends of production, there will be the equivalent of several more such layers by mid-century.

In the first 10 years of this century we have manufactured more plastic than in all of the 20th century.

Plastic is one of the most enduring materials we make; it takes an estimated 500 to 1,000 years for it to degrade, but 50 percent of the plastic we produce is used once and then thrown away. Eight million tons of plastic ends up in the ocean every year.

Facts like this are plentiful, but you get the idea. So, a call to arms. Here are some very easy things to give up in order to curb your contribution to the problem.

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