Don’t hate them because they’re plastic

by Rachel Pugh
Weekender General Manager
Times Leader Vice President of Marketing

It’s the word on the street. Do not drink from plastic bottles. Reuse water jugs, your sports water bottle, your coffee mug if you have to, but stop buying soft drinks in plastic bottles because you will ruin the earth. Got it. No more plastic. Let’s face it, you don’t want to be responsible for turning Mother Nature’s green gardens into landfills. Not you. You pass by the plastic Coke bottles in the grocery store and shake your head in disgust, “Polluters.”

And then the next day at work, you stand motionless by the vending machine, realizing you just put four quarters into the Coke machine and there, resting at the dispenser, all explosively carbonated from the fall from the shelf to your hands, is your ice-cold beverage, a Diet Coke in a plastic bottle.

Great, now you’re one of them. You are a contributor to a global problem, a situation which could potentially transform our lands from fruitful plains to garbage infested dumps. Mother Nature must be shaking her head in disgust.

Before you go off the deep end and lose all faith in humanity, relax with your three Rs you’ve known see you were a kid, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Ah yes, you almost forgot about this option.

Sure, if you are buying an abundance of plastic bottles and then pitching them out your car window when you are finished, you can officially call yourself a polluter (if you’re engaged in such deplorable acts like that, you can call yourself a lot worse). But if you are actively trying to be a responsible citizen and do your part in reducing the amount of waste you produce, you can always recycle those plastic bottles you consume. The world will not collapse because you bought a plastic bottle. it will collapse if you litter your land with it.

If you don’t have recycling picked up directly at your home, be sure to collect your recyclables and find a recycling plant somewhere in your community. This may require a little more work on your part, but you’ll feel better about yourself as you contribute towards making it a cleaner, more beautiful place to live.

Unsure of how those plastic bottles get reused? Coca-Cola eases your concerns. Coke has had a collection of apparel for quite some time, but now it has eco-apparel. That is correct. Coke has clothes made of organic materials which are eco-friendly and available for purchase on www.livepositively.com.

Just what makes these T-shirts and accessories organic? They’re made of recycled plastic bottles for starters.

You read that correctly. Each shirt and bag is made of several recycled plastic bottles. It may sound odd, but recycled plastic is used in many products and now you can add your wardrobe to the mix.

So don’t have an anxiety attack over buying a plastic bottle. Just make sure you do the right thing by recycling the product afterwards. You are helping the world become just a little bit greener and fashionable all at once.

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