1. Use Reusable Water Bottles

Get rid of those boring and wasteful plastic bottles. Buy a cool and colorful reusable one instead! Think about how many water bottles you consume in a day, in a week, in a month, and in a year. That's a lot of plastic ending up in our oceans and landfills, with only a fraction being recycled. Let's work on limiting that number to ZERO! In fact, the U.S.'s rate of recycling plastic is only 23%. Americans used about 50 million plastic water bottles last year, which means 38 billion water bottles are being wasted each year. REPLACE YOUR PLASTIC BOTTLE WITH A REUSABLE ONE! Hydroflask, CamelBak, and HyrdoCell are just a few brand names that sell reusable bottles!

2. Bring a Reusable Shopping Bag With You

Now think about how many plastic bags you use when going to the store. Whether it's you or a family member shopping for groceries, or at the mall, the only thing you're carrying around your purchases in is plastic bags. Once these plastic bags are thrown out, they all end up in our oceans or being carried by the wind on land. They are extremely harmful to our environment, causing living creatures like sea turtles, fish and different species of birds to consume the plastic bags we buy, and killing them. So substitute those plastic bags with reusable ones!

3. Say NO to Plastic Straws

Great alternatives for plastic straws include stainless steel, glass, and bamboo straws. They're easy to carry around and eliminate the plastic that ends up in places in our environment, where they should not be. Don't believe me? Take a visit to your nearest beach and count how many straws you see littered across the beach, along with all the microplastics surrounding them. Straws end up choking marine and land animals and can break down into these microplastics that are even more dangerous since it can be hard to remove them from where they are due to their extremely small size.