Our Giving Tuesday fundraising drive ends at midnight. Will you make a donation before the deadline to help us keep advocating for bold solutions to our plastic waste crisis? YES, I'LL DONATE:
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Friend,
Enough to fill 1.5 football stadiums -- every day.[1]
That's how much plastic waste our country throws out. It's clear that recycling won't solve this crisis alone. We need to stop producing so much plastic in the first place.
Major grocery stores can make a big difference. Chains such as Whole Foods still use unnecessary single-use plastic packaging at their stores -- so U.S. PIRG and our national network are mobilizing to get Whole Foods to eliminate this type of plastic from its operations.
Supporters like you will be crucial to keeping this advocacy going in the months to come. We've set a Giving Tuesday goal of raising $15,000 by midnight TONIGHT -- will you make a donation to give us the resources we need to win?
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With the holiday season in full swing and everyone buying more food, gifts and other items inevitably wrapped in or made of plastic, we're reminded of just how much waste we're creating.
The best thing we can do is to simply stop using and producing so much plastic in the first place.
But for years, the plastics industry has been pushing a different narrative: that our plastic waste can be reliably recycled and turned into new products. The problem? These same companies knew it wouldn't work.[2] Ultimately, collecting, sorting and melting down plastic just isn't feasible as a long-term method for curbing plastic waste. In 2017, less than 9 percent of our plastic waste was recycled.[3]
It's clear we can't recycle our way out of this mess. We need to stop it at its source, and we're calling on companies that produce, use and sell a lot of plastic -- including Whole Foods -- to play a major role in that effort. But our campaigns for a plastic-free future wouldn't be possible without the support of people like you.
Make a special Giving Tuesday donation to help us keep advocating for bold solutions to our plastic waste crisis.
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Last year, citizen advocates like you sent thousands of messages telling Coca-Cola -- 2019's top global corporate plastic polluter -- to reduce the amount of plastic in the products it produces, and to take responsibility for the plastic waste those products eventually become.[4] This year, we're calling on Whole Foods to eliminate single-use plastic packaging from store shelves.
And this fall, our research partners at U.S. PIRG Education Fund released a report that called for an even bigger shift: programs that will hold producers responsible for the waste they create. This will help us create an economy in which we produce less waste, we build products to last and be easy to repair, and we recycle or compost the rest.
Coca-Cola and Whole Foods are only the beginning. We'll keep working for legislation and corporate commitments to eliminate single-use plastic waste, as well as policies that place the burden of recycling plastic products where it should be: on the producer itself.
This Giving Tuesday, will you stand with us as we work to move our country beyond plastic?
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Thank you,
Faye Park
President
1. "Break the Waste Cycle," U.S. PIRG Education Fund, October 29, 2020.
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2. Laura Sullivan, "How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled," NPR, September 11, 2020.
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3. "Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures Report," U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, last accessed October 16, 2020.
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4. Matt Franklin, "Coca-Cola, Nestle and PepsiCo named top plastic polluters for the second year in a row," Break Free From Plastic, October 23, 2019.
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Your donation will power our dedicated staff of organizers, policy experts and attorneys who drive all of our campaigns in the public interest, from banning Roundup and moving us beyond plastic, to saving our antibiotics and being your consumer watchdog, to protecting our environment and our democracy. None of our work would be possible without the support of people just like you.
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U.S. PIRG
Main Office: 1543 Wazee St., Suite 460, Denver, CO 80202, (303) 801-0582
Federal Advocacy Office: 600 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, 4th Fl., Washington, DC 20003, (202) 546-9707
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