Four things to carry with you when going out

Recycling plastic is not very effective and the best way to deal with the amount of plastic pollution in the world is to avoid using buying new products that are typically plastic and are for dingle use. One way of refusing plastic is to carry around the following four items: shopping bags, refillable water bottles, refillable coffee cups and reusable straws.

1. Shopping bag

Taking a reusable shopping bag round with you saves you money and is convenient. Since the introduction of the 5p plastic tax in the UK, use of plastic bags has declined by 95%. Taking one with means you will avoid having to pay for one and there are plenty of outlets that sell reusable shopping bags. It is also a way of reducing the amount of plastic in your life.  

• Refillable water bottle

Every eating outlet in the UK has the legal duty to provide free tap water if asked by a member of the public, even if they are not a paying customer. So, it should not be too difficult to refill a bottle when spending your day outside. Also, it will save you a lot of money per year. The average person in the UK drinks 175 bottles of water per year. At the cost of about £1.50 a bottle, that would save you £262.50 a year.

• Refillable coffee cup

At least 2 billion coffee cups are used per year, generating a lot of waste. Coffee cups from cafes are single use items and often made of polystyrene, plastic or paper. It is more common for coffee cups to be ‘biodegradable’ and ‘compostable’. However, in reality, these cups will take hundreds of years to decompose. Often, paper cups which are labelled biodegradable or compostable only really do this under the right conditions and usually end up on landfill and produce methane, a toxic greenhouse gas which is worse than carbon emissions. Recycling coffee cups is not a good solution to the waste it produces. The best thing to do is to refuse using a cup in the first place and take one with you. You can also buy a collapsable coffee cup, so you can fit one in your pocket and will not take up much room in your bag.

• Reusable straw

Straws are a single use item and you prevent producing rubbish by using one. Straws and stirrers were to 7^th most commonly found item on beaches worldwide according to the International Coastal Clean up in 2017. If you use these regularly, you can buy a reusable straw and easy to store in a bag.