News, Views and You: Empowering YOU to make sense of and make a difference on CLIMATE CHANGE

CM Winter Issue No. 1.11.A  
  
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funvideoFun video: Sing along to "Plastic State of Mind" and bring attention to the wastefulness and environmental degradation caused by single use plastics. Share this with the kids in your life!












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Plastic Free & Loving it..Or Not!? 
Photo Credit: Chris Jordan
  
Greetings!

The Rules are simpletherules:
1. No buying or acquiring new
plastic.
2. No cooking with plastic or storing food in plastic.
3. Minimize all other plastic use.

The question is, are we up for the challenge?  At Rodale.com, home of some of our favorite magazines, February is a "Plastic Free" month! Climate Mama has got the kids on board, the dog has been warned, and we are in! The question is, are we up for the challenge? Follow us at ClimateMama.com and see how easy or not, it really is!

Why should we care about living with plastic?

carep
It's been called one of the "greatest inventions of all time!" Hasn't it made our lives easier, more convenient, and yes, more disposable? Affirmative to all those things. Plastic is also a significant contributor to serious health and environmental issues affecting not only our bodies, the air we breath, the food and water we consume, the health of our oceans and waterways, but in addition, one of the most damaging - perhaps unintended - and devastating consequences is accelerated human caused climate change.

What's the connection here? Did you know that the base
trash earth
Photo Credit: Juliet Mciver
ingredients in most plastics are fossil fuels, aka petroleum or oil. Lets focus the lens on just one example of our incredible thirst for plastics, in the form of plastic water bottles. According to National Geographic: "Americans buy more bottled water than any other country, more than 29 BILLION bottles a year which requires around 17 MILLION barrels of crude oil, enough to keep 1 MILLION cars operating for a year." This is more than 3x the amount of oil that was spilled into the Gulf in the summer of 2010! As a visual, imagine that the plastic water bottle your friend is currently sipping on is 1/4 full of oil, that's how much oil goes into making just one plastic water bottle. 

Remember, this is just the oil used for water bottles in the USA. What about what all the other plastic items used in the USA and around the world? Or even just the plastic water bottles in use worldwide! It boggles the mind and becomes one of those things that is just too hard to get our arms around. What's important to "take away" is that as our plastic demand increases, so does our use of oil, and subsequently so does the build up of human caused greenhouse gases polluting our atmosphere and accelerating human caused global warming. 
  
Look around you (or below in my fridge!) from the clothes you are wearingfridge plastic , to the computer you use, the flooring, furniture, linens, cups, pots, pans and dishes in your home, the car you drive, the packaged goods you buy, the toys your kids play with, even the credit cards you use everyday, almost everything we touch has plastic in it. Take a minute at dinner tonight (or the next time you have a chance to sit down with the kids in your life) and look around you, play "eye spy" and see how many things you can name, just in the room you are in, that are made from or have plastic as part of their make up. You will be amazed, and then, horrified! Now imagine living without those plastic things in your life. It wouldn't be easy or simple to stop our dependence on plastics in our daily lives.

Plastic Factsplasticfact: According to the Plastic Pollution Coaltion 

Plastic is forever - Plastic is a material that the Earth cannot digest. Every bit of plastic that has ever been created still exists, except the small amount that has been incinerated, and has become toxic air and particulate pollution.

Plastic is poisoning our food chain -In the environment, plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller particles that attract toxic chemicals. These particles are ingested by wildlife on land and in the ocean, and contaminate our food chain.

Plastic affects human health - Harmful chemicals leached by plastics are already present in the bloodstream and tissues of almost every one of us, including newborns.

Single Use plastics and Disposable plastics are the main source of plastic pollution - Consumption of single use and disposable plastics has spiraled out of control.  They are used for seconds, hours, or days, but their remains will last hundreds of years.

Recycling is not a sustainable solution - Unlike glass and metal, recycling plastic is costly and does not stem the production of virgin plastic product. Most of our plastic waste is landfilled, downcycled or exported to other countries.

The oceanic gyres - Patches of plastic pollution cover millions of square miles of ocean in the North Pacific and in the North Atlantic.  Scientists expect to find similar accumulation areas in the remaining oceanic gyres. There is no known way to clean up the plastic pollution in the oceans: the plastic particles are very small and circulate throughout the entire water column. 


Plastic Recyclingplasticre: We thought we could help all you Climate Mamas and Papas understand a little better what those tiny triangles and numbers on the bottom of your plastics mean, so you can help keep these plastics out of landfills and figure out which ones can be recycled. Check with YOUR municipality as not all areas recycle all plastics. The triangle symbol was developed by the Society of Plastics Industry in 1988 and is used universally to mean that something is recyclable. The numbers inside the triangles or the universal resin code (1-7) tell you what kind of plastic is being used. The number isn't mandatory though, so lots of plastics still don't contain one. For those that do, let's look at what they mean for recycling but also for your health! Keep in the back of your mind the numbers 2, 4 and 5. Check in at the Climate Mama Blog to find out why these numbers matter and for more specifics on each number...

 Plastic Advocacyplastica:
1. Launch a "Ban the Bag" in your town.
2. Take the the earth is in your handsRefuse Pledge, and have your voice counted on refusing to use single use plastics!
3. Sign the Change.org petition to encourage our Politicians to "walk the good walk" and stop using disposable water bottles. Tell them it will save us some money at the same time  too!!  

Yours,

Climate Mama
  
Climate Mama's Blog Updates

If you missed our recent national TV debut on Lifetime Channel's  The Balancing Act , catch it now. We also just signed on with Lifetime to be one of their featured bloggers, so check The Balancing Act Community Page for Climate Mama updates, tell your friends! According to host Host Olga Villa Climate Mama provides the: "opportunity to encourage our viewers to make a difference, get involved, and make the world a better place!"  

 We want to make sure you regularly get to see and read our informative, interesting and off-beat blog posts. If you aren't in the habit of checking our Friday Blog Updates, we want to make it easy for you. Sign up for our RSS feeds and the blog updates will automatically come to you! If you are a regular Facebook user, join our Group and send the link to your friends. You can also find our updates and some interesting Climate Mama tweets on Twitter.  

 

Green Moms logoLast year we teamed up with a group of incredible Mom Bloggers at the Green Moms Carnival, Check out some of these great Mom Bloggers for tips, views, news and ideas on living a "greener" life!  

Please forward to your friends. Thanks for helping us grow. Together we CAN make a difference!


Sincerely,

Climate Mama Logo
Harriet

Harriet Shugarman
Executive Director
ClimateMama.com