If we don’t act soon, our waters are going to become plastic soup

Solutions

There’s a high chance you’ve seen images of turtles being strangled by drink loops, or seahorses impaled by q-tips. It’s likely that these images were accompanied by messages to stop using plastic straws, buy reusable products and pay attention to the plastic waste you’re producing. There are many initiatives that follow along with this message and urge people to take action when it comes to individual plastic consumption. The Zero-waste movement has only grown since one of its followers became viral for her “trash jar” that she keeps 3 years of trash in. Plastic-free July grows each year with more participants.
All of these initiatives are great as a first step to stop plastic waste from taking over the planet and our waters, however, they’re not enough on their own. The plastic problem is getting worse, faster every year.

According to the Plastic Soup Foundation:

  • There is plastic everywhere, including inland waterways and on land
  • Agricultural land is heavily contaminated with plastic

  • There are microplastics in the air we breath

When it comes to solutions, the first things that come to mind are recycling and circular economy. However, recycling plastic is a complicated and expensive process and a lot of plastic ends up in the environment even we put them in the recycling bin. This is not to say we should completely disregard recycling, recycling is one of the solutions to the plastic problem but it’s not the only one.
Plastic Soup Foundation is a non-profit focused on preventing plastic from entering our land, water and our bodies. They offer three solutions to the plastic problem: preventing, cleaning up and processing plastics. The foundation has several programmes providing these three solutions like organising beach and water clean-ups, providing education on the harms of plastic, stimulating research and advocating for change at the legislative level. 

If you want to support the Plastic Soup Foundation and be a part of preventing plastics taking over our planet, you can donate to them below.

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