Our Breede River Winelands Rotary Club is very supportive of and involved in the Rethink the Bag Project in Montagu.
Monday the 3rd July 2017 was International No Plastic Bag Day and some of our members spent the day helping to remind and encourage our community to be more mindful of the harmful effects of the increasingly large amounts of plastic waste in our environment.
The initiative is being guided in the process by Two Oceans Aquarium and their Senior Bird Keeper, Hayley McLellan who founded the movement 'Rethink the Bag'.
Plastic shopping bags can take up to 1000 years to break down in landfill. Small, toxic pieces of plastic in the food chain are eaten by and kill animals, which humans then eat. Every year consumers use enough plastic shopping bags to wrap around the planet 50 times!
It has become critical for all of us to be aware of just how much damage the disregard of plastic waste in the environment is causing. We are slowly killing our planet and need to realise that irresponsible habits are not someone else's problem, it's OURS!
We would like to challenge all Rotarians to join us in a Plastic-free July! Some ideas to achieve this could include:
* reducing and not using any plastic containers at all.... use or buy glass or aluminium bottles instead
* do not use any single-use plastic bags .... remember to take your own, reusable bags along when you go shopping (and make this a permanent habit?), if you forgot (yet again....) to take your own bag/s along, ask the supermarket if they have a cardboard box for you to pack your groceries in
* even small items such as plastic drinking straws ( which can be replaced by paper straws), the nifty little plastic coffee capsules ; plastic bottle tops; plastic takeaway coffee/ cooldrink cups, etc. all do an incredible amount of damage out there
With plastic pollution being one of the top threats faced by our planet, we think you’ll agree that it’s time we all step up and make a few, easily attainable changes.
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