Institutions and companies, impose strict measures to limit the consumption of plastic
Plastic pollution problems have now taken on immeasurable proportions:
- 1,000,000 plastic bottles are bought every 1 minute all around the world.
- 50% of the plastic used is disposable plastic.
- 1,000,000 seafowl and 100,000 sea mammals die every year from plastic waste thrown away at sea.
- In 2050, the Mediterranean will have more plastic waste than fish.
- Plastic bottles are ranked 4th in the category of the largest quantities of waste matter found in Greek beaches for the time-span between 2004 and 2014.
Recycling is an important step towards the reduction of plastic pollution, although, unfortunately, it does not suffice. The solution is to reduce the production of plastic and reuse it wherever we can. To this effect, more and more bodies and businesses are becoming active on a local, European and global scale.
Prime examples:
- Τhe Εuropean Councilannounced to MEPs and staff that as of the following year they will not be provided with disposable plastic water bottles as these will be replaced by watercoolers. At the same time, the European Committee submitted a proposal for the banning of plastic bottles and disposable plastic to all members of the EU.
- Bundanoonin Australia is the first city in the world without plastic bottles. Everywhere in the city, as well as in businesses, there have been watercoolers installed and shops offer refillable bottles instead of plastic bottles.
- Multinational corporations, such as ΙΚΕΑ, Mc Donalds, Starbucks are beginning to implement programmes for reducing disposable plastic in their packaging.
Each of us could save up on a massive quantity of plastic, if instead of buying disposable plastic bottles, we chose instead to use refillable ones.
The market is now full of a variety of materials, designs and colours for canteens. All we have to do is select the one that is right for us and to always carry it with us, filled with fresh water. With regard to water cooler bottles, it is a positive fact that returnable water cooler bottles are a measure already implemented in our country since 1999 by the Greek branch of RAINBOW WATERS (one of the 3 largest companies of the European industry), as a result of which 7,000 tons of plastic have been saved to this day.
For the cost of small changes in our daily habits and choices and by simultaneous action taking, we can relieve our country of plastic.
Let’s decide to do it!