This Earth Day, Be freToGrow

Keeping an open mind in today’s political environment can be challenging. Aside from being armed with the facts when it comes to climate change, the next obvious question becomes what can we do about it?

The first steps are to look at our own personal consumption of materials and resources and ask where we can make changes to consume less. Suggestions, checklists and ways to go green are everywhere online, so whether it’s your office, home or community environment you’re looking to improve there are answers, alternatives and solutions in abundance.

In 2017, the question is less about if we as an individual in society are aware of options to go green and more about bringing others along in our green mentality. How can we be more vocal, share green practices with others and influence more change?

Green is creative. It goes beyond switching out lightbulbs (not to downplay the importance of this) to taking a thrifty approach in all aspects of our lives. Leading indicators to growth in green practices look to the sharing economy’s founders, activists and participants to ignite a fire under all of us.

The sharing economy is more than individuals making green purchase decisions, it’s a collective shift to an integrated green lifestyle that is capturing business and retail attention. As a growing number of consumers show their preferences with their dollars, business responds. Some site the obscene overproduction over the past decades as coming to an end as we usher in a third industrial revolution that produces products on demand and creative lifecycle uses for materials and resources. Let’s envision that future today.

At Frego, we play a part in this eco-friendly picture by offering sustainable food storage containers for a lifetime of reuse. It might seem like one small component, but we touch on benefits like efficiency and reducing food waste. Use your frego to freeze, heat, transport food and you’re using less water and energy in the food prep process. Also, when you open your fridge to contemplate bringing last night’s leftovers to work or skipping it and buying something elsewhere, your brightly colored Frego looks like an appealing option, especially when you compare it to dingy plastic containers.

During earth month, we’re sharing some facts about plastic that might be of interest. This type of research prompted the creation of frego so we share it often. This excerpt is from a report published by the Earth Institute at Columbia University:

Today Americans discard about 33.6 million tons of plastic each year, but only 6.5 percent of it is recycled and 7.7 percent is combusted in waste-to-energy facilities, which create electricity or heat from garbage.

The rest ends up in landfills where it may take up to 1,000 years to decompose, and potentially leak pollutants into the soil and water. It’s estimated that there are also 100 millions tons of plastic debris floating around in the oceans threatening the health and safety of marine life.

Relatively little plastic is recycled because there are various types of plastic with different chemical compositions, and recycled plastics can be contaminated by the mixing of types. Plastic waste is also contaminated by materials such as paper and ink. Separating plastics from non-plastics in the recycling process, and different types of plastic from each other is labor-intensive and so far, there has been no easy solution.

Studies like these and information on how humans are destroying the environment are not hard to come by. Again, we ask, what can we do about it?

In addition to making better choices for personal consumption, challenge yourself to take on some larger green initiatives and share them on social media and with your communities. Hold yourself and your family accountable and inspire others to make green choices.

How can you grow through an experiment like this? We’ll be reporting back on our initiatives using our #fretogrow hashtag on our social media. Chime in and let us know how you’re growing green too!