Friend,
Today is Earth Day, and we're so close to hitting our goal of raising $30,000 to fuel our campaigns to move our country beyond plastic.
We're calling on state legislators to ban the worst kinds of single-use plastics like polystyrene foam and targeting major corporations to get rid of unnecessary plastic packaging. You have the chance to make a major impact right now.
Thank you,
Faye Park
President
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: U.S. PIRG <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, Apr 22, 2022
Subject: Friend, will you put our planet over plastic this Earth Day?
To: Friend <[email protected]>
Many of us try to avoid single-use plastics as much as we can. But it's hard to avoid it when almost everything we purchase is packaged in layers of single-use plastics. And to make matters worse, most of this plastic can't be recycled. |
Friend,
Many of us try to avoid single-use plastics as much as we can.
But it's hard to do when the produce we bring home in reusable grocery bags is wrapped in plastic packaging, when the product we order online arrives with far more plastic packaging than the size of the product is worth, or when the takeout food we order from a favorite restaurant is transported in polystyrene foam containers.
And to make matters worse, most of this plastic can't even be recycled.
As part of our Earth Day Giving Drive, PIRG is working to get major corporations to get rid of unnecessary single-use plastic packaging, but we need your help.
As one of the largest retail companies in the world, Amazon leads by example when it comes to packaging -- but it's steering the world in the wrong direction. By one estimate, Amazon produced 270,000 metric tons of plastic packaging -- in just one year.1 Given the platform that Amazon has, it could be a major part of the solution to our plastic packaging crisis -- and that's what we at PIRG are calling on it to do.
And Amazon isn't the only one. Popular stores such as Whole Foods continue to fill their shelves with unnecessary single-use plastic packaging, earning the grocery giant an "F" from As You Sow's corporate plastic pollution scorecard.2
By not taking the necessary steps to cut down on its plastic use, Whole Foods is failing to live up to its reputation as a sustainable, environmentally conscious company.
Of course, there are plastics companies that don't like this idea -- plastic is a cheap resource that can easily be mass-produced.
But across the country, polystyrene foam bans have passed in more than 200 cities and counties. In just the past year, we helped lead the charge to ban some of the worst single-use plastics in Colorado, Washington and Virginia. We also helped pass the first producer responsibility laws in the country, in Oregon and Maine, and an important new truthful recycling law in California. And even some corporations like Dunkin' and McDonald's have indicated a willingness to phase out polystyrene and hand out straws only upon request.3
Thank you,
Faye Park
President
1. Karen McVeigh, "Amazon's plastic waste soars by a third during the pandemic, Oceana report finds," The Guardian, December 15, 2021.
2. "2021 Corporate Plastic Pollution Scorecard," As You Sow, last accessed April 6, 2022.
3. "Beyond Plastic," U.S. PIRG, last accessed April 6, 2021.
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