Should The Wildwoods Go Plastic-less?

In the ever growing world that we live in we forget how much plastic products we use only once and throw away. Things such as plastic forks, knives, spoons, plastic bags and plastic straws are only used on an average of 20 minutes before thrown away to be put in a landfill.

In a 2017 beach sweep through-out the state of New Jersey, volunteers picked up 373,686 pieces of trash. In the beach sweep 84.46% of all debris collected were plastic materials. To break it down even more see below.

• 1/3 of all material collected were single use plastics.

• Over 29,000 plastic shopping bags and single use plastic bags were collected

• Almost 13,000 plastic straws were collected

• Over 4,000 plastic utensils were collected 2

With this data we can see that there is a big problem on our hands. Plastics are flooding our beaches and some feel that the way to stop some of this flooding is to go plastic-less.

Just this past July, the cites of Stone Harbor and Avalon made the move to ban plastic bags and other non-recyclable products. Stone Harbor even took it a step further and banned styrofoam containers.

Also see: Jersey Shore Cownose Rays

Larger companies such as Starbucks have seen this trend and have became the first major company to start reducing it’s plastic footprint. So should we, the Wildwoods do the same?

Solutions:

In the proposed solutions by The Wetlands Institute, located in Cape May County, they list many products that establishments can use that are bio-degradable. Things such as paper straws instead of plastics one, recycled paper bags instead of plastic ones and Plant based utensils made out of Bamboo, Palm Leaf or Sugar Cane Bagasse and Recyclable or Compostable take out containers.

If we could join our fellow in shore towns in Cape May Country we could do really help our environment.

My question is to you, what do you think? Should we join them?

Comment below! Also check out these articles below!

Seagull Steals Man’s Wallet

Exploring the Abandoned Islander Family Fun Park