5 ways to reduce your single-use plastic use

5 ways to reduce your single-use plastic use

It's a near impossible task to get to zero single-use plastic use in North America. However, you can get pretty close with planning your day and where you shop or eat a little more. There's no shame in bringing a glass food container for leftovers to the Mexican across the street. Here are five ways, the Coral Eco team has cut back on single-use plastics:
1. Reusable shopping bags

Even though we don’t sell them just yet reusable bags are one of the easiest ways of getting your plastic use down. The environment will thank you for using less plastic bags by carrying a tote bag instead. Start by carrying one with you everywhere and not just for grocery runs and you can finally let go of the pile of plastic bags living under your sink.

2. Stainless steel water bottle

We think that Hydro Flask* makes the best insulated bottle out there. It keeps your water cold for 24 hours and its presence subtly encourages you to drink more water throughout the day. The stainless steel build means that you can leave it in the sun without harmful plastics leeching into your water. Pairing this with a reusable coffee tumbler will keep disposable cups and coffee lids out of the trash as well.

3. Silicon or stainless steel straws. Obviously.

I forgot my reusable straw on a day I went to Wendy’s for lunch but instead of grabbing a plastic straw this one time, I thought about the trade off between environmental ethics and convenience and just sipped from the cup instead. Switching to reusable straws may seem like small stakes but the decision to say “no straw, thanks” leads to bigger decisions and planning how single-use anything pervades daily life.

4. Email receipts

Choose retailers and grocery stores that offer emailed receipts. Thermal paper used for most receipts isn’t easily recycled and could be coated with BPA and BPS plastics that caused a scare in the 90s for doing nasty things to hormone levels.

5. Aluminum cans

I know you are very responsible and toss all your bottles into the blue bin where they belong but plastic gets a better reputation for being recyclable than it deserves. Recycling an aluminum can of Diet Coke uses up to 90% less energy than recycling a plastic bottle of the same size, that’s because aluminum cans are very easy to sort and easy to melt down. Where as plastics, need to be sorted with similar plastics and can never be returned to the same quality it entered the recycling stream as.

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