Single-use items are wreaking havoc on the environment, contaminating water and food supplies and driving climate change. They flood all industries, including packaging, cleaning, hospitality, exhibiting, personal care, and medicine. Plastic makes up 46% of disposables and single-use items by weight. In this blog, we will look at some of the harms of single-use plastics as well as some easy alternatives!
Why Do Single-Use Items And Disposables Cause Harm?
Single-use items are harmful for a range of reasons, including mass production, materials used, and toxic chemicals produced during the breakdown process. Many of the single-use items are made of plastic, however, many wooden disposables are just as wasteful!
Due to ease and convenience, single-use items have been mass-produced on a scale that waste management systems have not been able to keep up with. Single-use items are often made from plastics like Polypropylene, Polystyrene and High-density polyethene. These plastics – strings of polymers – never truly break down, they just continue to break apart until eventually they are microplastics. This breakdown process can take thousands of years, leaving microscopic plastic fragments everywhere! With their microscopic size, the plastics make their way into waterways, and environments, are ingested by animals and wreak havoc on ecosystems.
Microplastics have now been found all across the world, even in remote areas like Antarctica. They have also been found throughout every part of the human body, including the brain, eyes, placenta, and even breast milk. This severe pollution causes some known issues like fertility and cognitive decline, but there is so much we still do not know about the impacts of microplastics.
Steps For Improvement
Though single-use products continue to cause harm, their ease and accessibility mean they will no doubt continue to be used. While governments are working to limit use, there are individual changes you can make to limit your environmental impact.
Razors
Disposable and single-use razors are very popular. These razors last around 3 to 10 uses and cause an extreme amount of waste. Try swapping your disposable razor for a long-life alternative. Brands like Venus sell reusable razor handles, where the blades can be replaced. These are a step up from the single-use style, however, these still often use plastic in the handle that will eventually make it into the waste systems.
If you want to go a step further, look into brands like Estrid and Shoreline Shaving, that offer plastic-free models!
Paper Towels
Paper towels are extremely useful; however, they contribute to deforestation and produce methane in their break-down process. There are many alternatives to paper towels, the most obvious being cloths.
Buying and caring for a few clothes saves a considerable amount of damage to the environment. However, they still contain polyester and nylon. If possible, try switching to biodegradable natural cloths or cotton dishcloths.
Menstrual Products
Menstrual products are now one of the easiest switches to make from single-use products. There is a wide range of alternatives, from menstrual cups and period pants to washable reusable pads.
Cotton Pads
Cotton pads and makeup remover wipes can be easily swapped out for reusable and washable cotton makeup pads! These are now readily available around most of the large beauty retailers in the UK.
Clingfilm Wrap
Clingfilm is used in the majority of households throughout the UK. It is made by melting tiny plastic pellets mixed with additives. Due to the handling methods, millions of these pellets end up in the water systems and the sea!
There are many fantastic alternatives to clingfilm, but beeswax wraps are the most popular. Beeswax wraps are made using fabric sheets and beeswax. They are a sustainable, eco-friendly alternative that naturally breaks down, leaving minimal impact on the environment. The fabrics are reusable, more breathable than clingfilm, and can be washed and dried between uses. They do not last forever, but their lifespan is around 12 months, saving a considerable amount of plastic waste. Beeswax wraps are not vegan; however, alternative vegan wraps are readily available.
Tea Bags
As lovely as teas are, the tea bags are often quite bad for the environment. For the average teabag, around 25% is made from the non-biodegradable plastic polypropylene. The bags might seem small, but given that 98% of the UK drinks tea every day, it’s better to use a sustainable alternative.
Many brands have switched to “PLA” which is technically a plant plastic, but these bags are still not home compostable. A more sustainable option is loose-leaf tea, infused with either a mesh infuser or a teapot infuser.
Exhibition Stands
If you want to make a larger impact and you work for a business that exhibits at trade shows, try switching to a reusable stand. Switching to cloths instead of paper towels for 5 years would not even scratch the surface of the waste produced by just one custom exhibition stand per year. Custom-builds are made using valuable resources like wood, acrylic, and PVC that are binned and wasted after just two days of use. Instead, switch to a modular exhibition stand. These stands are reusable, sustainable and reconfigurable, so your stand can look and feel new for each show, even if it uses the same panels!
Summing Up
The sheer mass of single-use items used in daily life is significantly impacting the environment, pollution and ecosystems. By making these small changes to reusable alternatives as an individual or in business, you can significantly reduce your individual impact on the planet.
