While plastic has many valuable uses, we have become addicted to single-use or disposable plastic — with severe environmental consequences. Around the world, one million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute, while up to 5 trillion single-use plastic bags are used worldwide every year. In total, half of all plastic produced is designed to be used only once — and then thrown away. Researchers estimate that more than 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic has been produced since the early 1950s. About 60% of that plastic has ended up in either a landfill or the natural environment.
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Plastic Pollution Primer & Action ToolkitEARTH DAY NETWORK
Plastic Pollution
Primer and
Action Toolkit
Reduce
END PLASTIC POLLUTION
EARTH DAY 2018
EARTH DAY NETWORK
Refuse
Reuse
Recycle
Remove
2
Plastic Pollution Primer & Action ToolkitEARTH DAY NETWORK
Produced by Earth Day Network for the End Plastic Pollution Campaign, 2018
Copyright 2018 by Earth Day Network all rights reserved. This toolkit was last updated March 7th, 2018.
For more information, email plastic@earthday.org
Designed and prepared by Valeria Merino and David Ayer. Additional writing and support from Chris LeChevet,
Rachel Larrivee, Madeleine Ergastolo, and Laura Robledo
Additional resources were created by many others working to fight against plastic pollution. They are given
credit and websites referenced when their work was incorporated into this toolkit, though we did not follow
strict citation guidelines.
This Toolkit can be copied and disseminated for free as long as the format is not changed, and Earth Day
Network is cited or given credit.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
3
The Harmful Side of Plastics
4
Plastic Pollution in the Ocean
9
Microplastics
17
Plastic Pollution and Our Health
21
Plastic Pollution Footprint Calculator
23
Reduce
26
Refuse
30
Reuse
34
Recycle
38
Remove
44
Personal Plastic Reduction Plan
48
3
Plastic Pollution Primer & Action ToolkitEARTH DAY NETWORK
Plastic pollution is one of the most important environmental problems that we face today. It impacts
the environment and our health and wellbeing. We have all contributed to this problem mostly
unknowingly and we must work to reduce and ultimately to End Plastic Pollution.
Earth Day Network is committed to proactively be part of the solution and has created this Plastic
Pollution Primer and Action Toolkit to support anyone who wants to contribute too. Our experience
of almost 50 years has taught us that people care about their communities and will act to resolve
problems when they have access to relevant information and tools to help them.