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Did you know that in excess of 90 billion plastic beverage containers wind up in landfill sites each year? Plastics are durable, long-lasting, and they’re quite flexible. However, they’re also everywhere and they are not good for our environment. Plastics are made from carbon and various other materials. The carbon tends to come from oil, which is a fossil fuel that isn’t healthy for the environment. Add to that, most plastics aren’t biodegradable. In order to be eco-friendly, it’s important to figure out healthy alternatives to using plastic products. Here are 5 key options that will help you make the right choice for our environment.
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Top 5 Eco-Friendly Alternatives To Your Everyday Plastic Products Did you know that in excess of 90 billion plastic beverage containers wind up in landfill sites each year? Plastics are durable, long-lasting, and they’re quite flexible. However, they’re also everywhere and they are not good for our environment. Plastics are made from carbon and various other materials. The carbon tends to come from oil, which is a fossil fuel that isn’t healthy for the environment. Add to that, most plastics aren’t biodegradable. In order to be eco-friendly, it’s important to figure out healthy alternatives to using plastic products. Here are 5 key options that will help you make the right choice for our environment.
Option One – Opt For Glass Back in the day, milk was delivered in glass bottles that could be reused again and again. Look around your kitchen today and you’re going to see that’s definitely not the case anymore. Glass doesn’t contain chemicals that can be absorbed into your body and it’s easy to recycle. Glass is an excellent option when you can instead of using plastic products. Option Two – Invest In Reusable Shopping Bags
This is one of the easiest ways you can help lower the demand for harmful plastics. Buy some reusable bags for your groceries, heading to the beach, and any other place you might need them. Make sure you leave them in a convenient place so you have them when you need them and don’t always forget them at home. Option Three – Try Using Liquid Wool Liquid wool is a new promising biopolymer that looks and feels like plastic, however, it’s biodegradable. It’s derived from a pulp-based lignin, which is also a renewable resource. Liquid wool can be used to make toys, speaker boxes, and golf tees, for example.
Option Four – Polycaprolactone Soon, stitches are going to be made from PCL Polyesters, which is a slow-degrading plastic. PCL is a synthetic aliphatic polyester that is not made from raw renewable resources, but it will completely break down after about six-eight weeks in the compost. Polycaprolactone is another great alternative to using plastics. Option Five – Polymers That Are Starch-Based When you increase biodegradability, that means the plastic products aren’t going to hang out in the environment as long. Starch is a very low cost, biodegradable, and renewable natural polymer. Starch can’t completely replace plastic because it has poor mechanical properties. However, starch can be used to help make plastics more biodegradable. This isn’t the perfect solution for using plastic, but it’s definitely a promising step in the right direction.
Final Words Studies show beyond the shadow of a doubt that plastic products are not good for our environment. Scientists are working hard for alternative solutions. Use these five options to do your part in making smart eco-friendly choices to help strengthen our planet. Best of luck!