Another Earth Day has passed and I look around sometimes and wonder if our collective behaviour has changed anything of significance.

Of course, you and I are still fighting the good fight … but I wonder whether we could be doing more to influence our sphere of friends, family and co-workers.

For instance, when I read the following article by the Guardian, it made me really sad but later, reinvigorated my efforts:

Whales are starving – their stomachs full of our plastic waste

A 13-metre long fishing net and a 70cm piece of plastic from a car were among the debris recently found in stranded sperm whales

I suppose its another plausible explanation for the unexpected rise in whale beaching.

But it also serves as a reminder that we need to transition from a plastic indifferent to a plastic responsible collective.

Do you agree?

At Organic Lifestyle, we believe in providing solutions and to empower you to change your world.

Please watch these initiatives to know that there is hope:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhDkUrtvtFQ

18-year-old Boyan Slat combines environmentalism, entrepreneurism and technology to tackle global issues of sustainability. He has invented a way to cleanup plastic from the oceans within 10 years.

BTW Boyan and The Ocean Cleanup Team crowd-sourced US$2M in September 2015. The next step of construction and testing of large-scale operational pilots to cleanup the ocean is underway.

While this offers hope, we need to reduce plastic pollution at the source.

For instance, just think of single use plastic water bottles:

Another great video by storyofstuffproject

• 1/3 of water used in Dasani and Aquafina bottled water is simply filtered Tap water
• The markup of bottled water vs tap water is equivalent to 2000%
• What we recycle, just might just end up in landfill regardless

What if we simply found a way of recycling / re-purposing plastic at home?

I personally love this idea of converting specific types of plastic to oil at home:

Per this article by @DuncanGeere on Wired:

To operate, you put your plastic trash in a large bucket, then screw on a lid. The temperature inside rises, slowly melting the plastic, which becomes a liquid and then a gas. The gas passes through a tube into a container filled with water, where it than cools and forms oil again. That oil can then be burnt as-is or further separated into gasoline, diesel and kerosene. A kilogram of plastic turns into about a litre of oil.

There is a Canadian connection to this story – Whitehorse based P&M Recycling (thanks to Andy Lera) obtained an industrial Blest machine to handle their disposable coffee lids, yogurt containers and grocery bags.

Positive impact: Instead of losing money by shipping plastic waste 2,370 km to Vancouver for processing, now P&M Recycling are able to continuously heat 70 homes in Northern Canada, with almost no waste byproducts. Owner Pat McInroy says the technology will save P&M up to $18,000 annually on heating and labour costs. [Read the Article]

BTW Tell us if Organic Lifestyle should resell the Blest Machine!

As an eco-savvy consumer, you probably have already reviewed your impact and reduced the number of products you use on a single use basis. e.g., Takeout coffee cups – take a ceramic mug from office cupboard or stainless steel mug during transit; Straws – swap plastic for unbreakable glass straws etc etc

And if you haven’t already, let’s be plastic responsible by not using plastic water bottles in our lives (assuming you have access to safe tap water).

I wasn’t aware but according to Wikipedia:

Many Canadian municipalities have passed bans on municipal properties including: Ajax; Burlington, Cornwall, London, Newmarket, Niagara Falls, Oakville, Oshawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Windsor, Waterloo, Nelson, Victoria, Vancouver. These were followed in December 2008, by Toronto, Canada’s most populous city.

Sounds like San Franciscans are in good company by recently banning plastic water bottles:

The city has introduced a ban on the sale of single-use plastic water bottles on city-owned property, which this October will be extended to include events held outdoors on public property, and by January 2018 the ban will be broadened to include large-scale events of 250,000 people or more.

But our real collective challenge is to widen our impact by having another person among your friends, family or co-workers start their own journey towards reducing their plastic footprint.

Let’s start with NO plastic water bottles and NO takeout coffee cups!

And to put it all in perspective, just one more reason why we need to do this …

Last but not least, Organic Lifestyle would like to announce that the highly anticipated organic cotton percale and sateen sets from USA has finally arrived.

And check out the new Steel Grey bamboo bedding set:

We’ve marked down our organic cotton honeycomb throws by 34% and honeycomb pillows by 30%

Recent customer feedback:

Really cool site, have ordered twice and have loved the stuff I got. Was helped personally with ordering and discount issues. I hope you’ll expand to sell more household stuff. Toothbrushes. biodegradable plastic containers, small furniture items. the recommendations that are given are very helpful since i don’t have to do my own research. keep it up!