Insider Picks writes about products and services to help you navigate when shopping online. Insider Inc. receives a commission from our affiliate partners when you buy through our links, but our reporting and recommendations are always independent and objective. Jada Wong/Business Insider We create about 88 pounds of plastic a year — per person . And even if you sort your plastics into the right bins, less than 9% of plastic is actually recycled . That’s because some things like single-use straws and utensils are too small to be processed by recycling plants and get dumped in a landfill only to then make their way into the ocean. This five-piece set of metal straws from Amazon is an easy alternative to using plastic straws, and I’ll never use anything else ever again. I’d like to think that I was always pretty green — I reuse plastic bags from the grocery store as garbage bags, I donate clothes instead of throwing them out, and I sort my recyclables accordingly. But it wasn’t until I started reading about the disastrous effects of single-use plastics that I realized just how un-eco-friendly I really was. Suddenly, I started noticing just how many of […]
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