Have You Considered… Saying Sayonara To Single Use Plastics?

We surf in it, swim in it, lie by it. We travel across it. Yet, as World Ocean Day pops up in our calendar, it’s a reminder that not all of our daily habits are in its favour.

A few years ago a video (complete with graphic warning) went viral: a team of scientists spent a little over eight minutes off the coast of Costa Rica pulling a plastic straw from the nostril of an Olive Ridley Sea Turtle. It was agonising, excruciating, and a can’t-look-away reminder of exactly where our rubbish can end up.

On the team, and the woman who posted the video, was Christine Figgener, a sea turtle expert at Texas A&M University. She told National Geographic that she’s seen turtles with plastic bags and toothbrushes in their stomachs.

Straws are useless, Figgener told National Geographic, and contribute to the 5.25 trillion pieces of marine trash that have ended up in the ocean.

It’s no secret that our use of, and reliance on, plastic are harming the thing we love so much and all that lives in it.

WWF's recent  global plastic report, Solving Plastics Through Accountability (released this March), comes with a warning:

“Plastics are polluting nature, endangering wildlife and taxing natural systems. It is entering the food we eat and the air we breathe.”