Buy Recycled or Repurposed Products
I’ve said it here before and I’ll say it again: Single use plastic is not being recycled! The plastics industry started a PR campaign back in the 1990’s to convince Americans that we could continue to use single use plastic if we responsibly recycled it. Recycling the plastic is expensive plus they do not want to stop making virgin plastic because it’s a very lucrative business so . . .
They lied to us.
About 10% of all plastic produced actually gets recycled into something new. The rest gets thrown into landfills or our oceans or is consumed by wildlife or broken down into tiny particles which pollute our land and water. I read an article recently about our rainwater containing micro-plastic particles.
There are some brave, creative people who do what they can to reuse plastic. Check out Precious Plastics. It’s a project of Dave Hakkens, an engineer from the Netherlands. I feel great hope when I read about what Dave and fellow environmentalists are doing. Click here if you want to know more.
Lots of artisans who work in plastic sell their work on ETSY. I just went there and typed in “Recycled Plastic”. Got over 23,000 results. That’s pretty amazing! Every year at Christmas I buy presents from these folks. I’m supporting the guys wearing the green hats. We all can. After all, we are the consumer society.
Below is a vase I bought my sister for her birthday. I think I included it in a previous blog but this has a special touch. If you look inside the vase you can see the two liter drink bottle that was the base of this beautiful article. My sister took it and made it even more beautiful.
She turned waste into value.
That’s a challenge for all of us. Let’s make it our call because God demands it and we all know that . . .
