Showing The Earth Some Love

One person can make all the difference

*assuming the product isn't recycled.

Let's imagine a person, we'll call them Morgan.

Every morning, Morgan gets a takeaway coffee on the way to work for 5 days a week. They shop at their local supermarket and uses the plastic bags they conveniently offer. They have their own car and drive whenever they need to go anywhere. They shower every morning and uses their favourite orange-scented shower gel which comes in a 250ml plastic bottle. They also use shampoo and conditioner which also come in plastic bottles.

If Morgan switched to a takeaway cup, they would save 260 paper cups a year*, saving 92,040cm^3 of landfill space (and saving £65 a year if they bought their coffee from Starbucks).

If Morgan brought her own reusable shopping bag with her when shopping then she could save about 104 plastic bags a year, saving 17,087 cm^3 of landfill space. (and saving £5.20 due to the 5p plastic bag charge in the UK).

If Morgan cycled or took the bus into town instead of driving there, she could save (approximately) 322cm^3 of carbon dioxide produced per mile. If the town centre was 2 miles away, then they would save 1288cm^3 of carbon dioxide just by cycling there and back.

If Morgan switched to a bar of soap instead of shower gel they could save 12 bottles of shower gel a year*, saving 3,000cm^3 of landfill space a year.

If Morgan switched to bars of shampoo and conditioner instead of bottles they could save 24 bottles of shampoo and conditioner a year*, saving 6,000cm^3 of landfill space a year.

Over the course of a year, Morgan would have saved 118,127cm^3 of landfill just by doing these simple changes. Perhaps that doesn't sound like much to you, but now imagine that everyone on Morgan's street did the same thing. Say there are 25 houses on her street, and 63 people live in those houses, then they have collectively saved 7,442,001cm^3 or 7.4m^3.

If everyone in Morgan's town made these changes, and 30,000 people live in town, then that's 3,543,810,000cm^3, or 3544m^3 of landfill space saved a year.

If everyone in the UK made these changes, that's 67.53 million people, then that's 7.977 x 10^12 cm^3, or 7977116m^3, or the volume of about 112,000,000 humans (or around the population of Ethiopia, the 12th largest country in the world) laying next to each other like sardines.

It doesn't seem so little now, does it?

One person can make a difference. The choices we make every day have huge repercussions on the environment, and as shown above, even the smallest changes can have a huge effect. And it's very easy to think that our own actions don't matter if nobody else will make the changes, but trust me, change often starts with just one person.

So, what are you going to do?