Change. Change is one of the biggest factors of our lives. Changing jobs, changing schools, changing majors, but many people overlook one of the most beneficial, but yet possibly most difficult things to change. This change is change in plastic. More of our lives than we realize revolve around plastic. From our toothbrushes to our cars, almost everything used in your daily life is made partially out of plastics. All this plastics makes our lives much easier and convenient, but in the sense of things, 91 percent of these aren’t recycled at all and end up in landfills. This is why we need change in our use of plastics.

You, as the reader, may think this is a tall task to do, but it is much easier than many would think. There are many daily options around us that we can replace with much more sustainable goods. Things like garbage bags, ziplock bags, and plastic grocery bags are the easiest to think of. But there is much more. We can even replace things like makeup, soap, and laundry detergent with much more sustainable, plasticless alternatives. For garbage bags, you can separate your bins. You can use one bin for dry things and another, with a bag, for wet things. For smaller garbage bags, you can reuse old bread bags. All of these goods have sustainable alternatives that are sold in almost all store, you just have to make the switch and go from speed and convenience, to a little more time required to help make the world a better place for future generations to come.

I participated in doing this myself this week. I did two very simple but effective things. The first thing I changed was my bathroom garbage bag. As I said earlier, you can use old bread bags, which is exactly what I did. This change did not affect my life at all. I still have the bag in and it is just like using a regular garbage bag. Its a little nicer though because the bag is longer, allowing me to be able to fit more into it. The second change I did was changing to using powdered laundry detergent. This was a more impactful change to my life, because I was used to just throwing in a tide pod and forgetting about it. Using powdered detergent, I had to measure it out, using a tablespoon and a half, and then pour it into the correct spot of the washing machine. The end result was the same though. Fresh clothes and less plastic used.

Overall, these are minute changes to our lives that, if everyone participated in, would have a big change on the world. Just changing small amounts of our lives to be more sustainable would cut out much of the plastics that are ending up in landfills and our oceans. These changes would also mean we would need less of these plastics, resulting in less toxins being released from production and less natural resources being destroyed. So, living sustainably is a small price to pay for a big reward to the environment.