July 28th each year is World Nature Conservation Day. This is a day to increase awareness about the need to protect natural resources, like water and energy, and to recognise that a clean and healthy environment is vital to the health of all of us on planet Earth.
One of the biggest problems facing the environment right now is plastic pollution. Humans are producing plastic waste in mind-boggling quantities, and only a small portion of it is recycled globally. To make things worse, plastic never really goes away once it is in the environment: it just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces.
Sometimes when we are faced with a problem on this scale, it is easy to feel a little disheartened. There is a temptation for us to think ‘What can I do? There is only one of me.’
But none of us is ‘just one person’. There are billions and billions of us! And the impact of every little bit we do to help protect the environment multiplies by the number of people doing it.
Suppose you make the change from shower gel to solid soap bars. That might save 12 to 15 plastic bottles each year from your household waste recycling. 12 to 15 bottles is hardly a world-altering amount. But what if one thousand people all make the same change? One million? Two million?
Now think how many bottles would be saved if those same people also bought a reusable water bottle to take out in the morning instead of buying bottles of water or pop. Studies suggest that the average adult in the UK buys 150 single use bottles each year, and only around half of those will reach a recycling bin.
Nobody expects any one person to go completely plastic free overnight. We don’t need one person out there doing ‘zero waste’ perfectly. What we need is millions – billions – of people to do the best they can and make small changes to their shopping baskets and habits.
Those small changes add up to a big difference when we all make the effort together.
Written by Wendy, Guide at The Deep.