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How many times have you been given plastic utensils when you have take out food?

How often does that plastic ware end up going into the garbage without even being used?

A plastic coffee lid is use for about an hour and then thrown away. Plastic bags are used for the trip home from the grocery store and then maybe reused once if you have a dog.  People who work in fast food restaurants habitually hand over plastic forks, knives and spoons, by the millions each day. Mostly no thought is given to the cumulative effect of this. Each day thousands of tons of waste plastic floats down sewers and into rivers around the world.

Most of that ends up in the oceans. In fact the Pacific Ocean has a vortex of circulating plastic that has been caught in a current called the North Pacific Gyre. (Click here to see an animated map created by Green Peace). The combination of plastic garbage and ocean currents have resulted in a literal carpet of garbage the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

Most people in North America eat at least 4 meals outside their home each week. If you are like most of these people you have many opportunities to refuse this plastic. A simple thing you can do is to keep one set of these utensils and re-use them. Plastic knives and forks can be cleaned just as easily as metal ones and will last nearly as long.

The other opportunity is to educate others to do the same. When you refuse the plastic utensils or, coffee lid or plastic bag, make sure that you let the person behind the counter know why you are refusing it. Saving and re-using plastic is the ethical thing to do.

When someone gives you plastic that you don’t need- think of the oceans and think of your kids.