Isabel Pastoor

I don't use any disposable coffee cups. I do not drink coffee and do not buy beverages when I am out. So when I drink tea at home, I always use a reusable cup. 

I never use plastic bottles for any beverage. I always use a reusable drinking container. When I am out and about I always bring a water bottle from home and when I'm at home I just drink from a glass. I don't drink soda, coffee, etc. so I don't buy drinks that come in disposable containers.

I order groceries online through delivery services because of the pandemic. These groceries all come automatically in plastic bags. This is especially a problem for Target. Target gives so many bags with at least one bag for every category of item you buy. I could contact Target to express my opinion on this wastefulness. I could also see if there's a way to request paper bags instead. I don't know if they will do this for their drive up services because they are very systematic about the drive up shopping. In order to refuse plastic bags I could get delivery more often than pickup. 

I could choose to purchase fewer products packaged in plastic and other non-biodegradable and non-recyclable materials. Especially during COVID, when in-person shopping is not possible for me, it's much easier to buy pre-packaged foods. Sometimes I justify purchasing these foods because my eating is low-impact in other ways, but since plastic can never be destroyed or removed from the earth, it can never really be offset.

In poorer countries where meat production is not subsidized and income is lower, meat is unaffordable to many. Meat is too expensive to eat every day, and is used sparingly. Recently, as countries in the Global South experience rising income and standards of living, meat consumption also increases. This is both due to people affording more meat, and people adhering to a more Western lifestyle as a show of status and wealth.
Eating more meat has negative impacts on our climate because meat production emits more greenhouse gases than plant production, uses more water and land per calorie, and produces other types of harmful waste. These environmental impacts are felt unevenly by people across the world and in the United States. Since meat production contributes to climate change, people living in warmer climates are disproportionately impacted. Warmer countries also tend to be poorer countries, so the people who contribute less to climate change through their eating habits suffer more, which is perverse. Within the United States, wealthier people tend to live farther away from environmental hazards caused by meat production.