Let’s Aim for a Plastic Free World

MITASC member Stacy Godfreey-Igwe spent the summer of 2019 learning how sustainable businesses engage in their marketing and communications to the public. Working for Saathi, an Indian company that makes women’s sanitary pads from banana peel fibers, Stacy contributed several posts to their blog, including this one on the harms of single-use plastic.

We’ve all thrown away some piece of trash – whether it’s tossing the tea bag we used for a warm cup of chai, removing old clothing we outgrew, or discreetly spitting out a now flavourless piece of gum. Teabags, clothes, and chewing gum sound unrelated but actually, share a common trait. This may come as a huge surprise (it was for us) but all the items mentioned above contain plastic. Yes, even chewing gum has plastic! Despite efforts to avoid the typical plastic bag or bottle, we all are still contributing to the tons of plastic left behind in landfills, or worse, oceans.

This month marks “Plastic Free July” a month-long challenge to avoid single-use plastics (straws, packaging, utensils, etc) and limit the overall amount of plastic products we discard. There’s an entire website dedicated to providing information that empowers visitors to make this movement known within their communities. Even the simplest act of refusing to use plastic has a large impact for India, the world, and Climate Change. To celebrate, we will be writing a 3 part blog series about climate change focusing on how it affects the environment, our health, and what we can do as individuals to help!

Read the full post on the Saathi blog.

 


 

This public reflection was produced as part of the work of the MIT Action Sustainability Corps. Learn more about MITASC here.