Although we're halfway through the month, it's never too late to find ways to rid your life of unnecessary plastic. This month is nationally known as "Plastic Free July" to encourage everyone to try making concrete changes to reduce personal use of this omnipresent fossil fuel product. Can you challenge yourself to identify one regular source of plastic in your life and work to eliminate it?

Here are some tips:

Collective actions over a lifetime make a difference. Additionally, Annie Leonard, the creator of The Story of Stuff, reminds us that changing personal consumption habits “is a great place to start but it is a terrible place to stop.” Only by changing systemic plastic use will we truly make a dent in the approximately 150 million tons of single-use plastic produced annually, 8 million of which is estimated to enter the ocean each year. As you tackle personal reduction, you can multiply the effect exponentially by supporting local, state and national legislation.

After an eight-year phase-in period, which state became the first, on July 1, 2020 , to start prohibiting all food from going to landfills?

Answer at bottom of page

So you put the right things in your recycling bin: clean and empty cans, bottles, dairy tubs, paper and cardboard. But that's only part of completing the recycling triangle. To make the system actually work, you have to then buy recycled. But what does that mean?

Products are generally made from one or a combination of three sources of materials:

The more you choose products with #3, post-consumer recycled content (PCR), over those with none, the more you are telling manufacturers that you want them using your recyclables to make new products. You can create demand for your recyclables and help keep recycling a profitable, sustainable industry by buying items with PCR.

The next time you're in the store, look for these common examples of products with PCR and consider purchasing them over products with no PCR:

In July 2012, the Vermont legislature passed the Universal Recycling Act , banning landfill disposal of plastic, aluminum and metal bottles, jugs and cans; paper and cardboard; and yard residuals and food scraps.

The law made Vermont the first state in the U.S. to require that all food scraps be recycled from all sectors --commercial, institutional, residential -- by 2020. Mandatory compliance was phased in over six years, beginning with the largest generators of organic waste on July 1, 2014. The aim is to prevent waste, save landfill space and avoid greenhouse gases.

Newsletter editor: Diane Landry, BI Zero Waste (Volunteer) Director

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BI Zero Waste is an all-volunteer program of Sustainable Bainbridge.

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