World Refill Day is a global public awareness campaign to prevent plastic pollution in our environment and help human beings live with less waste.
What is Plastic Pollution?
Plastic pollution is the accumulation of plastic objects and particles in the environment, such as plastic bottles, bags, and microbeads, which endangers wildlife, wildlife habitats, and humans.
What are the effects of plastic pollution on our environment?
Plastic debris or waste can affect our land, waterways, and oceans. Each year, 1.1-8.8 million tones of plastic garbage enter the ocean from coastal towns. As of the end of 2013, according to predictions, over 80 million tons of plastic marine waste had accumulated in the world’s oceans, based on the premise that one point four percent of global plastics generated from 1950 to 2013 had reached the ocean and collected there. According to some estimates, by 2050 there may be more plastic in the oceans than fish.
Living organisms, particularly marine animals, can be in danger due to mechanical impacts such as entanglement in plastic objects, issues associated with consumption of plastic waste, or chemical exposure within plastics that interferes with their physiology. Degraded plastic debris can have a direct impact on humans through direct consumption of tap water, indirect consumption (eating animals), and hormone disturbance.
How can we reduce plastic pollution?
Since plastic pollution has adverse effects on our environment, people have had to invent several ways of controlling plastic waste. Some of these ways include plastic recycling and incineration. Moreover, environmental ministries can come up with policies for a reduction in the production of plastics.
People can also organize programs that may help with litter cleanup, making our environment a safer and healthier place.
However, according to World Refill Day, celebrated on 16th June, recycling might not be the best solution to preventing plastic waste problems. According to some activists, reusing and refilling might be the best solution to preventing plastic pollution.
Anne Schroeer, Oceana’s Director of global strategic initiatives, says:
“The issue is really that recycling is not the solution. Reuse and refilling is really a fantastic solution. “
Anne adds:
“So, when you think about bottles, there are over 450,000,000 plastic bottles that are coming to the market every single year. There are five hundred million billion bottles worldwide that are in the markets and over 30 billion of them, according to Oceana’s estimations, end up in the ocean annually. So, a refillable bottle is refilled 20-50 times, so you can imagine that’s a reduction in the plastic of ninety-five percent. “
Initiatives such as World Refill Day are very significant in the world. It is through such programs that make our waters, lands among other things around our environment safe and clean. People should appreciate such programs and ensure to participate in them because we can only achieve the target of plastic reduction if we all work together.
It was only about a week ago that marine environmentalists commemorated World Oceans Day in order to help clean up our oceans and save marine life.
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