Plastic-Free Living

National Clean Up Day is an annual event dedicated to promoting environmental stewardship and community bonding by encouraging people to come together and clean up litter from public spaces. Falling on the third Saturday of September, the event unites volunteers from all walks of life to take collective action in cleaning up parks, beaches, forests, streets, and other communal areas.

The US is # 1 when it comes to generating plastic waste and the third contributor to ocean plastic waste. We have to do better. So let’s start with something simple. Washing dishes....

Bottle caps are consistently listed in the top five types of plastic litter on beaches and are also in the top five items considered harmful to marine life....

Balloons are the damage level professional single use piece of plastic garbage. Let’s be clear, despite quite a bit of greenwashing by the industry, there are no eco-friendly balloons. They end up as litter that is easily ingested by wildlife; a recent study suggests that balloons are the number one cause of mortality in seabirds that have ingested plastics. 

Ingredients aside, one of the biggest ways the beauty industry harms the environment is through its hard to recycle plastic packaging. Oftentimes, made from mixed plastics, these containers are not recyclable and find their way into landfills or waterways. "In 2018, in the U.S. alone, almost 7.9 billion units of rigid plastic were created just for beauty and personal care products. And the problem is set to get worse." -Plastic Pollution Coalition.