Reduce, reuse, recycle… if you can’t refuse!

Reusable Bottle Bags are for shifting the culture around how we think, don’t think, and can re-think about single-use plastics.

There is so much of Earth’s precious resources that go into making a single-use plastic bottle before it arrives in our hands and there is such a powerful impact that these bottles have on the environment after leaving our hands.

“Plastic pollution is killing our oceans. The equivalent of two garbage trucks worth of plastic are dumped into our oceans every minute and up to 34 billion plastic bottles become marine pollution every year. The results are devastating for ocean ecosystems and animals like sea turtles, birds, and whales. ‘Single-use plastic bottles are a bad idea that we’ve gotten used to,’ said Matt Littlejohn, Oceana’s Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives. ‘Our campaign was designed to show the absurdity of single-use. The time to act is now as the production of single-use plastic is set to grow by 30% in the next five years.’” maritimefairtrade.org (2022)

For folks living in places fortunate enough today to still have clean, running, drinking water, it can be confusing that the same folks are still choosing to drink little single-use plastic bottles of stagnant water instead.

Sometimes we’re handed that single-use plastic bottle at an event and we’re really thirsty. Sometimes we’re traveling and it’s the only water we have available. Sometimes we buy the plastic bottle straight up because we forgot our reusable bottle or we just want to drink that special drink. Sometimes a plastic bottle of water is given to us by a doctor or a massage therapist, or in some way we associate that water bottle with our own health and well-being, and we disassociate the water from the plastic bottle’s longterm environmental impact. Can we really choose our health over the health of the environment when, in the long run, our health is interdependent with the environment?

I use my reusable water bottle as much as possible so that I don’t have to use single-use plastic bottles. I usually refuse whenever I’m offered a single-use plastic bottle that I don’t absolutely need, but I admit that I do buy other drinks in plastic bottles. I’m definitely not yet free from the destructive habit of single-use plastics! However, if and when I buy a drink in a single-use plastic bottle or cup, I try not to let that bottle or cup remain single-use.

“Manufacturers design and produce PET bottles as one-time-use only products. Although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved PET bottles for single use and for reuse, many manufacturers and consumer advocates urge the public to limit their PET bottles to one time use only. www.healthline.com (2019)

Plastics can leach toxic chemicals and disruptive microplastics into the environment and into our bodies. Scientists have found microplastics everywhere now. When I think of how these plastics originate from fossil fuels which in turn originate from plants and animals who existed millions of years ago I can almost imagine this global plastic takeover as a resurrection of our really distant ancestors. Maybe they’re coming back with a vengeance.

Don’t you find it strange that we feel comfortable letting our drinks and food be handled and transported and left to sit in plastic containers for an unknown amount of time and then we fear re-using the same containers right after using them only once?

Perhaps there are other reasons we want to get rid of our single-use plastics after using them only once. Maybe we feel guilty having a single-use plastic bottle when we’re in proximity of drinkable tap water. Maybe we don’t like the trashy vibe of the bottle after using it. Maybe we just don’t want to look like another single-use-plastic-bottle consumer casually destroying the environment… In those cases, get a reusable bottle bag!

I always try to give my plastic bottles another go before recycling them. Recycling is better than nothing but it is also a complicated energy-consuming process and should be seen as the last resort.

“Less than 3 million tons of plastic bottles are recycled each year around the country. While that may seem like a lot of plastic, that amount represents less than 8% of the total plastic waste produced in America.” - www.oberk.com (2018)

Triangle diagram © Zero Waste International Alliance - www.iucn.org (2021)

The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development calls for action to ‘Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources’ (Goal 14) and ‘By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, particularly from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution’ (Target 14.1).

If we can’t refuse, rethink, and redesign, we can at least reduce, reuse, and recycle…

Reusable Bottle Bags can be used to cover a disposable plastic bottle for a better-looking reuse and to make a statement that we are reducing single-use plastic to help protect our oceans.

Disclaimer: as mentioned above, plastics can leach chemicals and microplastics into the environment and into our bodies. Check the number on the plastic to know the chemicals. Most drinking bottles are plastic number 1, polyethylene terephtelate (PET).