Will you be part of the plastic free solution from this July?

Did you know that there’s an area in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas (you can fit the UK almost three times into Texas) known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch… which is composed entirely of plastic?

It’s no wonder we need Plastic Free Foundation’s Plastic Free July. It has a range of material and ideas to help you (and millions of others around the world) reduce single-use plastic waste every day. And we need it.

According to TheWorldCounts – an organisation created to raise awareness of important global challenges – the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is around 2,483,990 square kilometres in size and growing every second. By the time you’ve finished reaching this article it would have grown some more. Take a look.

Plastic waste facts

Other shocking plastic facts* include:

Almost 100 billion plastic packaged items are thrown out by UK households yearly.
Only 1 out of 5 plastic bottles is recycled, the rest becomes litter or gets buried.
More than 100 million plastic bottles are used worldwide every day.
Plastic bottles contain Bisphenol A which has links to obesity, diabetes and cancer.
In 2022, the most common UK plastic packaging waste was from fruit & vegetables.
It takes a PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) bottle 700 years to start decomposing.

The sad fact is that plastic waste often doesn’t break down and can last hundreds of years in landfill or end up as litter leading to polluted soils, rivers and oceans, harming the creatures that live in them – and us as we eat those creatures.

So, what can you, as an individual, do to be part of the plastic pollution solution, right now?

You & Plastic Free July

One thing you could do is stop using and buying plastic bags. Use a sturdy cloth bag instead at the supermarket or how about placing your groceries in a cardboard box?

Start using a keep-cup at your local coffee shop or swap liquid shower gel for bars of soap to avoid single-use plastic. Or stop buying cleaning products packaged in single-use plastics, and pre-packaged food staples. Head to a market for a bulk buy of cleaning liquids or loose foods and use recycled glass jars, paper bags or cloth bags to put them in instead.

Join the challenge

The Plastic Free July website has many more tips, advice, and ideas about what you can do to reduce plastic use at work, home, in public and in the community. It also aims to educate people on what others are doing in their efforts to reduce their use of plastics.

Join 100+ million participants worldwide who are taking action to stop plastic pollution, sign up to start the July challenge today.

*Statistics from www.habitsofwaste.org , https://www.theworldcounts.com and www.statista.com