Plastic Free July

Plastic Free July - 15 years of plastic source reduction, one person and one action at a time!

We recently had an opportunity to meet Rebecca Prince-Ruiz, founder of Plastic Free July. She shared her journey in creating Plastic Free July and her inspiration for demonstrating the massive collective impact of millions of small actions taking place around the globe.

Plastic Free July has grown from a small project in 2011 to a global movement reminding us that sometimes we have a choice and we can choose to refuse single use plastic. Source reduction like this reduces upstream pollution from fossil fuel extraction as well as downstream pollution from plastic waste disposal and incineration, and it also reduces plastic leakage to the environment from transportation and use at points in between.

Participating in Plastic Free July does not require eliminating every source of plastic in your life. Choose one action — bringing a reusable water bottle, refusing a plastic straw, buying loose produce without plastic packaging, carrying a reusable shopping bag — and build that one action into a habit over the course of the month. At the end of the month, it might be surprising how easy it was to do. Or, if it doesn’t work out, our focused attention on this one action and its barriers to implementation can help identify next steps to break down those barriers and make it easier to go plastic free!