Bring your own!

By Rebecca Harnik
The average person in the U.S. produces 4.6 pounds of trash every single day. What is most frustrating is that so much of this garbage is so easily avoidable. As a society, we simply have become accustomed to throwing things away after use. We need to give these habits of needless consumption a second thought.

We can reduce our own impact without accepting the status quo of waste. Instead of tolerating the norm, try bringing your own bag, cup, plate, bowl or spoon next time you go somewhere where you know you’ll get one that’s disposable.

Bring a bag. Did you know that the world consumes about four trillion plastic bags every single year? Many governments are recognizing the problem: the Chinese government has recently passed legislation to eliminate certain types of plastic bags, and has completely banned the free giveaway of plastic bags. Ireland is another leader in this movement: Five years ago, the Irish government imposed a tax equivalent to about 20 U.S. cents on every plastic bag, and consumption of the bags declined by staggering numbers—about 95 percent. In Himachal, India, anyone caught using a plastic bag can face up to seven years in prison!

Although I don’t necessarily condone imprisonment for the entire world, it would be easy to cut back on the wasteful consumption of bags. Bring your own cloth bags when you go grocery shopping, or even to the mall, and you’ll save many unneeded bags.

Get a reusable water bottle: Another easy way to save disposable beverages is to bring a reusable water bottle with you on hot days. A good bottle will help you fight against the trend of disposable bottles. According to an article by the Union of Concerned Scientists: it takes 1.5 million barrels of oil (enough to run 100,000 cars for an entire year!) to make plastic water bottles, and transportation burns even more. Not only that but 90 percent of used plastic water bottles don’t even get recycled!

Bring a mug. Next time you go to the coffee shop, don’t waste a cup. Keep your mug in your bag, car, on your bike or in your office and bring it with you. Not only will you feel cooler, but a travel mug will keep your coffee hotter. Also, many coffee shops offer a discount to those with their own mugs. If they don’t offer a discount, suggest it; many shops can be very responsive to customer ideas if enough people ask, and you might encourage others to bring their own cups.

As a college student, another great way of preventing cup waste is bringing your own cup to parties. Seeing hundreds of tossed red solo cups everywhere makes my blood run cold and most of them are not recyclable. Try having a bring-your-own-cup party next time.

But don’t stop just with these suggestions. Do you go out to lunch every day at work? Bring your own Tupperware through the buffet line instead of using one of those giant Styrofoam containers. Or, as green blogger Colleen Heenan mentioned last week, bring your own lunch in a reusable container to avoid the waste of eating out. If these options are not possible, you can at least bring your own utensils. I recently bought an all-in-one knife/fork/spoon from REI that I carry around in my purse, and its versatility has come in handy.

These bring-your-own ideas are just a start. Try making a conscious effort to pay attention to all of your trash as you are throwing it away. Think to yourself, “How much of these discarded items were actually unpreventable trash, and how much could have been avoided by bringing your own alternative?”