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Do you ever find yourself at the French Broad River staring at piles of plastic litter wondering what you can do to stop this?  Asheville GreenWorks and our sister page, Going Plastic Free, are here to help you make this happen! Mind Your Plastic May is a month-long campaign to inform you about the grave social and environmental harms that ensue from plastic waste and equip you with the knowledge to reduce plastic in your own life.  

All month long, we will be sharing plastic reduction tips, volunteer opportunities to address plastic waste, educational materials featuring local Asheville businesses, and much more. We aim to foster knowledge and encourage mindfulness around plastic consumption and disposal for individuals and business owners. This month, we hope you will follow us on Facebook and Instagram, where you will gain valuable knowledge about how to refuse, reduce, reuse, and recycle plastics, as well as learn about local waste reduction efforts.

Join our 
Race2Reduce and commit to decreasing your plastic usage for the entire month of May. Sign up here to join the challenge and earn points to win a $25/$50/$75 gift card to Ware!

Many thanks to the businesses and restaurants who supported this effort and are working hard to reduce their own plastic waste. #goingplasticfree

Join us in our love for the planet as we
 address and defeat our global plastic addition.
Donate now for a plastic-free future
Mind Your Plastic May is meant to encourage and challenge us in our journey to live plastic free. These posts are created by GreenWorks staff. If you've found these posts helpful and encouraging, please consider making a donation to support this work. If you have any questions, please email [email protected]

Start with the Sponge

5/11/2019

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Sponges, plastic-based scrubbies, and the plastic packaging they come in are a frequently purchased item that can be gone from your kitchen once and for all. Coupling a dish cloth or felted wool scrubby with baking soda not only does the trick to clean tough spots, it often does it better than any plastic version.

The major ingredient to cleaning the brown spots off your baking dishes comes in recyclable or compostable cardboard. Baking soda. Sixty eight cents a box. This one cleaner is worthy of removing 50 years of brown spots from your grandmother’s corningware making it look new. No need for a single use plastic scrubby pad when you have baking soda! Clean stubborn spots from the stove top to the sink, making everything in your kitchen sparkling. Sprinkle a little baking soda on a wet dish cloth or felted wool and rub. To make it even more effective you can use vinegar, which can be bought in a glass container. Baking soda alone works as an abrasive that removes dirt with little scrubbing, yet is gentle enough that it will not scratch pots, pans, or even windows. When vinegar is added with baking soda a chemical reaction occurs that could be used to build a homemade volcano or get off those stubborn stains and push through the grime.


In fact, baking soda can replace most household cleaning products that are sold in plastic containers.
Read about "50 Clever Ways to Clean with Baking Soda" (courtesy of Taste of Home) for more on this!
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Shutterstock / Geo-grafika
The sponge? Sponges are usually the dirtiest thing in the kitchen and are hard to keep clean but you can start each morning with a fresh, dry, clean dish cloth and put it in the hamper at the end of the day. Or you might want to make your own from felted wool!
​

While natural sponges may come to mind in replacing plastic sponges, please consider these other alternatives. Natural sponges are living animals and if not overharvested are a renewable resource but natural sponges have an important ecosystem function. They are essential in keeping waters crystal clear so the sun’s rays can penetrate to the bottom of bay’s where seagrass beds provide a nursery ground for sea animals. So instead of having sponges pulled out from the Gulf of Mexico and shipped to your home consider using old wash cloths or wool from a local store, our coral reefs will thank you.

The last time I was in my mother’s kitchen and removed all the brown spots from her baking dishes my sister looked over and asked, “When did you become so domesticated?” I just smiled and thought she can’t wait to try this on her coffee pot.

Joele Emma
GreenWorks Education Director

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​Asheville GreenWorks is a 501(c)3 non-profit environmental organization, governed by a Board of Directors. Established in 1973, GreenWorks mission is to inspire, equip and mobilize individuals and communities to take care of the places we love to live.
  • Hard 2 Recycle
  • About
    • Job Openings
    • History
    • Staff/ Contact
  • Get Involved
    • Internships
    • Make a Donation
    • Sponsorship
    • Volunteer
    • Wish List
    • Youth Environmental Leadership Program >
      • YELP Staff & Alumni
      • How to Apply
  • Programs
    • Bee City USA Asheville >
      • 10th Anniversary Yearlong Pollination Celebration
      • Native Pollinator Plants and Nurseries
      • Pollinator Garden Certification
      • Pollinator Gardens & Meadows Project
    • Education
    • Urban Forestry >
      • Cool Green Asheville
      • Food Tree Project
      • RRI
      • Tree Nursery
      • Treasured Trees >
        • Treasured Trees Calendar
    • Rivers & Roads >
      • Adopt-a-Street
      • Clean Streams Day
      • Cleanup Supply Stations
      • Trash Trout
    • Waste Reduction >
      • Asheville Bag Monster
      • Composting Information
      • Flip Your Lid
      • Plastics Reduction Task Force
      • Recycling Information
  • Silent Auction
  • Upcoming Events
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Benefit Concert
  • Blog Roll
    • Latest News
    • Mind Your Plastic May
    • Protect our Pollinators
    • Voice for the Trees