PLASTIC FREE JULY

One of the first things that a person thinks when trying to face the reality about sustainability or improving our footprint in the planet is, HOW INCREDIBLY OVERWHELMING IT IS!! We have a quick look to our daily routines and we realised how far into the rabbit hole we are. Is discouraging and incredibly hard to break cycle of habits that have been established in our daily lives since we have use of memory.

Something I like to promote that, not only to others but to myself as well, is : "Every little step, helps". I'm not trying to convince anyone about how to change the world over night. This is not possible. It would be foolish to try and we would end up giving up in frustration. What it IS possible is to try to challenge ourselves to move into the right direction. Making us take baby steps towards a goal, allowing habit to grow and become the new norm.

Initiatives like #PlasticFreeJuly are great example of this. It allows people to get familiarised with a problem and, in a fun way, make it achievable. It also uses to its benefit the strength of social media, the sense of community and the incredible and irresistible establishment of a goal. A measurable and catchy goal; "Not to buy any new plastic during the month of July"

The #PlasticFreeJuly movement may sound new to you (even to me) but it has been around for quite a while. Since its inception in 2011 by Rebecca Prince-Ruiz as green initiative for the Government of Western Australia, it got established in 2017 as The Plastic Free Foundation, an independent non-profit organisation that promotes #PlasticFreeJuly as its core strategy to fight against global plastic pollution problem. In 2019, a survey revealed that 29% of the population worldwide was aware of this initiative and that at least half of those, took part on the challenge in 2018. They calculate, that with the efforts undertaken by the participants of the challenge and their families, 825 million kg of plastic waste have been avoided each year! That is an amazing number and makes an incredible difference towards a greener future.

From Close the Circle, and myself, I would like to encourage you to consider this challenge as the opportunity to reflect on what you buy, see how much plastic you involuntarily purchase, and see, how much of that can be reduce to 0. You would be surprised with how much one person can actually do.

Link to https://www.plasticfreejuly.org/ if you would like to know more and contribute to an amazing project.

Have a lovely week, and keep it green!