Swapping Single-Use Items

Here at Sustain, we encourage taking small steps toward protecting our planet. One of the simplest ways to become more eco-friendly is by considering your daily habits. Drinking water, buying groceries, and washing the dishes… what do these common tasks all have in common? Single-use items!

Single-use items are disposable products we throw away after using one time, furthering pollution and climate change. Water pollution, natural resource depletion, increasing microplastics, and crowded landfills are some of the many realities for a single-use item’s lifecycle. Each day the U.S. businesses and homes throw away enough plastic to fill a football stadium nearly twice!

The good news is that swapping these products is easy, and the alternatives will last longer than the options we’re all used to.

Let’s take a look at a few of the many swaps you can make:

Reusable bags

Plastic bags have become a growing problem for our environment. From the oil used in manufacturing to the pollution that harms wildlife, one of the best swaps you can make is to stock up on reusable bags. Plus, their durable design will help you carry groceries with ease!

Water bottles

Joining plastic bags as one of the biggest polluters are plastic water bottles, with nearly 80% of bottles never being recycled. Consider switching to a sturdy reusable bottle, which can be found in a wide range of fun colors and patterns!

Dish sponges

Although using the dishwasher is the most sustainable option, we must use sponges occasionally. Try these alternatives to traditional sponges whose fibers harm our natural world.

Utensils

Cut back on single-use forks, knives, spoons, and straws the next time you dine out! Plenty of perfect swaps can easily fit into purses and backpacks and will help reduce the utensils that may take up to 1,000 years to decompose.

We encourage you to start small, but switching to environmentally friendly single-use items will benefit our planet for centuries.

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