Even more than fireworks and flags, the thing that I love most about the Fourth of July is the food. A picnic, BBQ, cookout—whatever you call it, nothing beats al fresco dining. Every year, I gather with friends and family in someone’s backyard with cold drinks and hot dogs, all the while keeping our feet dipped in kiddie pools to cool off from the scorching midsummer heat.
But alongside picnic culture often comes single-use plastic culture. In years past, my family celebration has featured plastic bags full of shucked corn; straws in fountain sodas; cigarette butts from Uncle Jim’s chain smoking; plastic forks for the potato salad; and foam takeout containers filled with ribs from the local BBQ joint because Uncle Jim let the grill get too hot and burned dinner.
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It’s not just me: These are some of the most pervasive single-use plastic items out there. Cigarette butts, plastic bags, plastic straws, plastic foam foodware and plastic cutlery are among the top 10 most common plastic items polluting beaches worldwide, according to data from Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup® (ICC).
That’s why all of us at Ocean Conservancy are declaring our independence from single-use plastics by calling for source-reduction policies that will help eliminate these items from beaches, our ocean, Fourth of July picnics and beyond.
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This month, which is also Plastic Free July, Ocean Conservancy released a new report that, using nearly 40 years’ worth of ICC data, lays out policy solutions to some of the most common types of trash found on our beaches and waterways.
The first step? Passing policies that take cigarette butts (which contain a plastic filter), bags, straws, foam foodware and plastic cutlery off our shelves. While these items may seem small, taken together, eliminating these items can make a big difference. Volunteers have collected more than 100 million of these items since 1986. Getting rid of these five items in the United States alone would cut 1.4 million tons of plastics ANNUALLY. Put in patriotic terms, that’s roughly the weight of four Empire State buildings, more than 6,600 Statues of Liberty or 15.4 BILLION hot dogs (with the buns).
Not only do these items pollute our beaches in huge quantities, but they are also all effectively unrecyclable. Ocean Conservancy data show that nearly 70% of the most commonly collected items polluting beaches—including these five items—cannot be recycled via municipal curbside recycling services. With nowhere else to go but landfills, incinerators or the environment, the only viable solution is to get rid of them altogether.
There’s a lot we can do as individuals to reduce our reliance on single-use plastics, but at the end of the day, we need big, systemic changes to make a real dent in this problem. So, while I’ll be bringing the reusable cutlery, straws and bags to this year’s family cookout, I’ll also be calling for my state, local and federal governments to take them off the shelves altogether—it’s the patriotic thing to do!
Read the report here. Then get involved and ask your elected officials to support eliminating these five harmful plastic items.
The post Declaring Independence From Single-Use Plastics appeared first on Ocean Conservancy.
