Green Thought Thursdays: Disposable Utensils

Once a week, I am offering up a tip or action or idea that we can all engage with to work towards living in ways that allow for more health and wellbeing for all aspects of the planet.

This week the green thought is about disposable, plastic utensils!

Plastic utensils can often degrade into components that are harmful to animals including humans. Photo: Cap Radio.

Single use plastic items are definitely bad for the environment. Once discarded, plastic degrades in the environment releasing toxins and breaking down into microplastics that clog the digestive and respiratory systems of animals who ingest or inhale them. An plastic utensils are no exception to this. An estimated 40,000,000,000 plastic utensils (forks, knives, and spoons) are discarded every year around the world. That is a lot of plastic that only gets used once and then is thrown away!

A solution is to to stop using plastic utensils. When we get a meal from a restaurant or café, we should all think about if we really need any plastic utensils. Many food items can be enjoyed with the use of utensils at all. And if a meal really does need a utensil to eat it, we can all carry reusable utensils. There are some great ones out there that come in sets with a knife, fork, spoon, and even chopsticks. And they often have their own carrying bag. By reducing the plastic utensils we all use, we can all help reduce the amount of plastic that is produced and the amount of plastic that gets into the environment! So, we can all start saying “no thanks” when a server asks if us if we would like any plastic utensils with our food.

What do you think of these ideas? Do you have any other solution ideas?

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Green Thought Thursdays: Combining Stops

Once a week, I am offering up a tip or action or idea that we can all engage with to work towards living in ways that allow for more health and wellbeing for all aspects of the planet.

This week the green thought is about combining stops while driving!

When we combine multiple stops in a single outing, we will keep the car engine warm and save fuel! Photo: West Milford Messenger.

Driving a car burns fuel. Even in an electric vehicle uses fuel, and most of the fuels used by cars and trucks around the world are fossil fuels. The burning of fossil fuels releases carbon into the atmosphere which is one of major causes of global climate change. So, every time any of us take our vehicle on the road, we are contributing to climate change. Not good. And one thing that tends to use more fuel is to make individual trips to individual destinations. Doing this means that a engine starts off cold each trip, and cold engines are inefficient engines.

A solution is to combine trips. Longer excursions with multiple stops let our vehicle’s engines warm up to their most fuel-efficient temperature, and then not cool down as much before we start them again. This means that the engine will use a minimum amount of fuel for the distance we need to go and the stops we need to make. So, we should all plan our errands one after the other in a single outing. Adopting this strategy will help us all save fuel, save money, and save the planet!

What do you think of these ideas? Do you have any other solution ideas?

Thank you for visiting my blog! Please check back next week for another Green Thought Thursday!

If you are interested in other ways to connect with me, here are a few options:

Follow this blog!

Subscribe to my YouTube channel – A Birding Naturalist

Follow me on Instagram – abirdingnaturalist

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