I had a sweet tooth last night at around 2 a.m. When everyone in the house was sound sleeping, I softly went to the kitchen . A packet of cookies was only thing that I could find for myself. When I was enjoying the cookies at midnight, I noticed a symbol on the packet indicating that the plastic wrapper was not recyclable. I continued to eat my cookies, drink water and save the leftover cookies in the same packet for another day. Then I went to bed with a full stomach, hoping to sleep peacefully. But I couldn't sleep. I was terriefied by my thoughts that came out of nowhere. It's all too usual to have late night thoughts if you're awake. I had a thought too, just like everyone else. This time, however, it wasn't about me, my dreams or my career ; it was about mother earth. I became quite stressed because I believed that simply consuming a packet of cookies is causing environmental damage. I wanted to see if there was anyway to solve this issue. I got out of bed and grabbed my laptop.
To come up with a solution, I started by figuring out the major causes of plastic pollution.
There are two major sources of plastic pollution:
2. Plastic Bottles
Be it biscuits, snacks or milk, everything these days come in plastic wrappers. These wrappers aren't even accepted by scrap dealers and if we throw them away in the trash, they do not get recycled and instead gets piled up for years.
We try to avoid using plastic bottles wherever possible, but almost all of the soft drinks/cold drinks we buy come in plastic bottles. No matter how hard we try to avoid it, we always end up buying it.
I looked for numerous ways and alternatives for reducing plastic pollution. I found a list of options after browsing internet. But the best thing I came across I wish we all could follow. I'm sure there are many individuals out there, like me, who have felt bad about harming the environment by using plastic in their daily lives but have been unable to find a solution.
So here, I would like to share my knowledge and the research I made with all the readers -
An all-in-one solution to plastic pollution is making and using eco bricks.
The word eco bricks is probably unfamiliar to most of the people. It was something new to me as well,but as I started learning about, it turned out to be quite interesting.
An eco brick is a plastic bottle filled to a specific density with used plastic. They are used as construction blocks.
Yes, you read that right - Plastic bottle filled with used plastic !
We'll discuss more about eco bricks in the upcoming blog , including how to make and use it. We shall also discuss about the websites that assist in the collection of eco bricks.
