Local non-profit greenUP! is proud to announce its participation in this year’s Plastic Free July, an international awareness month focused on the environmental and health impacts of plastic pollution. greenUP! will be sharing Plastic-Free challenges each week of the month of July and they invite the Carson City community to join them.
Plastic production has multiplied exponentially over the last twenty years, flooding the market with more plastic products than our waste management systems are prepared to handle. Much of this recent plastic proliferation has been characterized by plastics with a fleeting lifetime of use. Plastic straws, bags, utensils, and cups, especially, all have an active use time of anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, yet are made of materials that persist in the environment for centuries.
These common single-use plastics, which we don’t have great recycling systems for, are sent almost immediately to our landfills, or worse — they escape into our environment. These escaped plastics, in particular, pose a risk to human and ecological health due to physical and chemical pollution. Scientists are also beginning to research possible health implications of microplastics, the product of non-biodegradable plastics breaking into smaller and smaller pieces.
Microplastics are being found in land and water systems everywhere, including Lake Tahoe, where they make their way into the global food chain. GreenUP! invites all interested community members to follow along with Plastic Free July challenges that will be posted weekly on greenUP!’s website and social media.
To read the full story, visit https://carsonnow.org/story/07/07/2021/greenup-urges-carson-city-community-join-plastic-free-july-movement-2021.
Author: Jeff Munson, CarsonNow.org
Image: CarsonNow.org