By: KAITLYN PADILLA
Staff Writer
- Conserve Water
When doing things like brushing your teeth or washing the dishes make sure you don’t leave the water running while you aren’t using it, you don’t want the excess waste water to run into our oceans.
- Shop Sustainable
About 14 million tons of plastic make it into our oceans every year so try to stay away from plastic when you are shopping, look for stuff that is biodegradable or recyclable, and always bring a reusable bag. Remember it is better to buy paper or aluminum products rather than plastic.
- Volunteer
There are many beach clean-up opportunities that you can participate in, this is a great way to get involved and keep trash off of the beach.
- Reef Safe
Another simple task that you can do to help is make sure that your sunscreen is reef safe. Many sunscreens contain ingredients that are deadly to our coral reefs and are harmful to other marine life. So when purchasing sun sunscreen make sure that the bottle says reef safe. The main toxic ingredients are oxybenzone and octinoxate so make sure to look out for those.
- Eco-Tourism
When participating in tourist activities such as whale watching or snorkeling, make sure that the company is sustainable and actually cares about the ocean.
- Always Recycle
Recycling is a very easy task, find a place near you and start collecting any plastic, glass, and aluminum in your home. Almost all plastic that isn’t recycled will end up in the ocean. This leads to fish eating the plastic that they find in the ocean and when we eat the fish the plastic will end up in us.
- Single Waste Plastic
This one is similar to number 2: Stop using single waste plastic. This includes plastic straws, plastic silverware, food containers, plastic bags, and many more. This is one of the most harmful things to do to our oceans and if we continue to use so much plastic, by 2050 our ocean will contain more plastic than fish.
