Plastic-free July is a global campaign that challenges people to give up single-use plastic. The idea is the brainchild of Rebecca Prince-Ruiz, an activist living in Western Australia. She realized that, in addition to raising awareness, she wanted to do something to actually reduce plastic waste. She helped round up just 40 people in Perth, who volunteered to give up plastic for the month of July. In the last 6 years, the idea has become so popular that this year, over a million people in 130 countries are on board.

Beth Terry, America’s best-known plastic-free activist, first participated in Plastic Free July in 2014. She has nothing but high praise for this initiative and its founder. Beth’s website MyPlasticFreeLife.com includes “100 Steps to a Plastic-Free Life”, “carry your own containers for take-out food and leftovers,” along with reusable cookers and glass drinking straws. Eat ice cream on a cone rather than get it in a plastic-lined cup. Give up chewing gum.

You’re probably already using a reusable cloth bag rather than plastic at the grocery store, and drinking from a stainless steel or aluminum water bottle rather than buy water in a plastic bottle. But PlasticFreeJuly’s A-Z list shows how easy it can be to replace single-use plastic with a reusable version. The list includes replacing plastic doggy bags with folded up newspaper and using cloth diapers (尿布). PlasticFreeJuly’s website also lists some pretty astonishing facts. For example: Scientists predict there will be more tonnes of plastic than tonnes of fish in the world’s waterways and oceans by 2050. Plastic manufacturing consumes 6% of the world’s fossil fuels. In the first 10 years of the 21st century, the world economy produced more plastic than it did during the entire 1900s!

A lunch break – it’s an important and often necessary part of our working or school day.   And now we’re spoilt (惯坏) with a lot of places to buy our lunch from, all offering attractive dishes and  sandwiches to eat on the go.

But our appetite for buying our lunchtime fare is not just costing us money, there might be a cost in terms of damaging our planet too. Just grabbing a sandwich, crisps and maybe a cake and coffee can produce at least four items of waste. Paper boxes, cups, wrappers and plastic knives and forks are all part of our disposable (一次性的) feast in addition to the food waste we create. Some experts say throwing away food, which produces methane (甲烷) as it rots, is a bigger cause of climate change than plastics.

But regardless of what causes the most damage, the solution, according to an environmental campaign group called Hubbub, is to eat packed lunches. Tessa Tricks from the group says “People are saying that they are buying food to take out because life has got busier.” And she says people think they are being more efficient; but she argues that it's usually healthier and cheaper to make your own lunch. It means you can eat the things you really want and make the quantity that you actually need.

Of course, preparing your lunch is another thing to fit into your morning scramble (忙乱) of getting ready for work, so if you haven’t got time and you are going to buy lunch, an alternative that Hubbub suggests is to take your own container to a shop and ask them to put your food in it. The idea of using reusable coffee cups for hot drinks and refilling water bottles has already proved successful, so this could be another step in the right direction.