It’s Earth Day 2018! The 48th annual Earth Day to be exact.

The very first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22nd 1970; Canada joined in on the celebration in 1980; the day became recognized worldwide in 1990 and in 2009 the United Nations officially named this day Mother Earth Day! Today, more than 1 billion people in 192 countries around the world recognizes this day together, that’s a pretty powerful movement if you ask us!

What is Earth Day

Every year on Earth Day people around the world come together to plant trees, clean up litter and raise awareness to the many issues that the Earth’s environment currently faces. The purpose of this day is to inspire people to observe and appreciate our Earth and to take notice of our impact on the environment.

2018 Focus

This year for Earth Day the major focus is for people to pledge to reduce the number of plastic items they consume every year in an effort to decrease and end plastic pollution. The production, use and disposal of plastic has a massive impact on our oceans, water, wildlife and our very own health. Single-use plastics are the largest culprit of our plastic problems and include products such as straws, plastic bags, shampoo bottles, coffee cups, food wrap and the list goes on an on.

5 Earth Day, plastic fun facts, and food for thought:

Over 50% of the plastic we consume, is used once and thrown away
Annually, more than 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide, (over one million used every single minute! )
The amount of plastic thrown away each year could circle the earth four times
More than one million seabirds and 100,000 marine animals die every year from the consumption of plastic
It takes over 500 years for one plastic bag to break down in a landfill. Then, it becomes microplastics that continue to pollute the planet

Our plastic fun facts may not be all that fun, but they really are eye-opening! We hope they inspire you to take notice in your day-to-day life and look for ways to reduce the amount of plastic you consume. There are so many alternatives to single-use plastics, and with a little planning, it’s easy to make small changes that can result in big impacts on our environment.

What We Try to Do

We try to be environmentally conscious in our day-to-day lives and while we know we aren’t perfect and have a long ways to go, every change helps. We have committed to being more environmentally friendly in 2018. Sometimes it may not be the easiest option, but we know it is the best option.

For those of you who don’t know this, Brigette and I actually work together in our 9-5 life so we see A LOT of each other… even though we always feel like it’s not enough. As part of our daily ritual, we go for a coffee together every morning. I am so grateful that Brigette is willing to put up with me in those early minutes of the morning because I am a grizzle pre-coffee! Brigette recently bought a reusable coffee cup from KeepCup that she has her coffee in every morning to reduce her contribution to our landfills. Way to go BMac!! But, like we said it’s little changes that make a huge difference… just from her alone there will now be 260 fewer coffee cups thrown away every single year, wow!*

*This stat horrified Brigette that she consumes that much coffee annually – yikes!

Top 8 Tips for Reducing Waste

Here are our top tips for Earth Day and we would love to hear about your tips in the comments below:

Skip the disposable produce bags and bring your own reusable bags! Check out our favourite reusable produce bags.
Say no to straws! Who really needs them anyway?! For those who like to use straws check out our favourite reusable stainless steel straws.
Bring reusable jars to purchase your spices, flours and other bulk purchase! Forgo prepackaged spices and disposable bags by using mason jars. Bulk Barn will weigh your empty jars before you start shopping so it doesn’t count towards the weight of your final purchase… genius!
Goodbye paper towels and disposable napkins, hello cute dish towels and reusable napkins. This is a free ticket to go shopping for some fun kitchen linens, yes please! We’re kinda obsessed with these cute cacti tea towels, check them out!
Plastic wrap is so last year, reusable food wrap is so much cooler and cuter! We loveeee the Abeego Natural Food Wrap, check it out! (P.S. it is made of beeswax.)
Sandwich bags, ziploc bags, snack baggies these are old news! Reusable, dishwasher safe, heat proof and freezer proof Stasher reusable seal bags are the way to go.
Get a set of chopsticks to keep at home so you don’t have to use the disposable kind. Real chopsticks are so much prettier anyways! Check out this reusable cutlery set you can take everywhere!
Silicone baking mats are a kitchen staple for us! No more parchment paper, no more aluminum foil and no more scrubbing your baking pans because nothing ever sticks to them! These are our favourite!

Thanks so much for joining us on the 48th Earth Day. We are so glad you stopped by! We hope you learned some great tips and got some good ideas on small changes you can make. Leave us a comment on your favourite ways to be more environmentally friendly, we’d love to hear!

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