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Jul 11th, 2022 by Admin

Plastic Free Essentials to tackle Covid

After the outbreak of the corona virus, people are constantly using protective equipment and plastic items just once and are throwing them away.

It may seem convenient to use the plastic items once as it keeps us safe from deadly COIVD -19, but this has increased plastic pollution and created a long-term environmental issue. You may not know, but plastic takes nearly 450 years to decompose.

Keeping this in mind, here are four unique ways to skip single-use of plastic during COVID – 19

1. Skip/limit the use of plastic gloves

During the pandemic, everyone started using plastic gloves as they felt that plastic gloves would prevent contamination and they would be saved from the deadly coronavirus. But this was a wrong thought. Using plastic gloves increases the risk of covid.

If people do not use gloves, then they use to wash their hands more frequently, which helps in rinsing viruses from the hands. And if you really want to use gloves, you can use cotton gloves which can be washed after every use and can help in reducing the usage of plastic gloves.

2. Avoid using plastic masks

After the breakdown of the corona virus, markets are flooded with various masks, and people buy them blindly without even checking the material. Most of these marks were made of plastic and contribute to increasing pollution. There were masks which are meant for single usage only.

It is mandatory to cover your nose and mouth with a mask. Still, instead of purchasing plastic masks, you should always prefer cotton masks or reusable makes, which can help reduce the increasing pollution of plastic. Also, if you have old masks made of plastic, they should always be disposed of in recycle bin.

3. Avoid using plastic straws/glasses

Avoid using plastic straws/glasses

There were many restaurants that used to serve beverages in reusable glasses with straws. But after the outbreak of the corona virus, people fear using already used glasses and straws (even if they are washed properly).

Because of this, restaurant owners have to make the decision of jumping to disposable plastic straws and glasses. This has resulted in boosting plastic pollution to a higher extent. To avoid this, you can carry your own reusable straw, and restaurant owners can also switch to paper glasses in order to limit plastic usage.

4. Use of PPE kits

It was noticed that during COVID crises, people were buying PPE kits out of fear without even realizing that these kits were meant to be used only at places offering medical facilities.

When these kits were used at home or offices, they were disposed of carelessly, resulting in increased plastic pollution. The best way to reduce pollution here is not to buy PPE kits unnecessarily, and if bought, then they should be disposed of with great care so that the environment is not affected.

5. Hand sanitizers in plastic bottles

It was believed that hand sanitizers are the primary source of killing any type of contamination by the COVID virus. Everyone was buying hand sanitizers from markets, and people were selling it in plastic bottles everywhere.

Because of this, plastic bottle disposal increased and resulted in the plastic pollution. To avoid this, you should buy hand sanitizer in bulk so it will prevent disposing of small plastic bottles and can reduce the effect of plastic pollution.

6. Reusable shopping bags

Reusable shopping bags

You should always use reusable shopping bags made of cotton as you can easily wash them after bringing vegetables from the market. You should not carry a plastic bags and dispose of them daily as this will also increase the plastic pollution.

7. Using solid laundry bars

The solid laundry bars and soaps often come in paper wrapping, without plastics. These bars are best for laundry as they offer good results and reduce plastic pollution.

On the other hand, if you are using liquid detergents and other laundry stuff which comes in plastic storage boxes, then it will boost the pollution of plastic. The best option here is to either buy liquid detergents in bulk so that you do not have to dispose of the regular, or you can switch to the solid laundry bars.

Wrap Up

These are some of the important plastic-free essentials to tackle covid. There is no way to change yourself overnight, but slowly you can start adopting one or two options and then switch to a bigger change. Plasticcollector has prepared the list of unique ways of plastic free essentials to tackle covid.

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