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Status 2022
Nine tips for avoiding plastic

Bye-bye, plastic

Join the fight against plastic waste! It's really quite easy! Like 44 grams easy, to be exact.

1Getting rid of plastic bottles: even your body will thank you.

According to utopia, the human race collectively purchases one million plastic bottles every minute. That's an alarming number. And not even half of these bottles are recycled. By consuming only one plastic bottle per day less, you can reduce your plastic consumption by about 28 grams. The best would be to switch to tap water, the best-controlled food in Europe. An additional activated charcoal or osmosis filter system filters out any impurities. Interesting fact: The Chemical and Veterinary Investigation Office of the Muenster-Emscher-Lippe region examined 32 mineral waters for microplastics. The result surprised all the researchers: All the mineral waters contained microplastics. Most of the particles were found in PET bottles. The health effects have not yet been studied.

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Some %s plastic bottles have been purchased since you've been reading this article alone! And not even half of these bottles are recycled. The majority of them end up in the oceans and will never decay but will only disintegrate into dangerous microplastics.

2Take plastic out of circulation as soon as you can

Car tires are a true microplastic nightmare. The finest of plastic particles are released into the air when driving and braking, thereby increasing fine dust pollution. These microplastic particles end up in our lungs when we breathe. What's more, the rain transports these minute particles into the sewer system. Minute particles that cannot be filtered out in sewage treatment plants and remain in the water. So if you prefer clear water without microplastic, you should absolutely avoid unnecessary car trips. And if you do have to drive, practice environmentally friendly driving.

The joy of parking

It's hard to believe that one-third of city traffic is caused by the daily search for parking spots. That's why you will do the environment and your nerves a big favor if you use one of the various apps for finding parking spaces. You can find out which apps are available here.

3Everything in the bin?

Separate right! Germany is the world recycling champion. We have been separating our garbage in Germany since 1991. Even though only about one-half of all plastic waste is recycled – lots of it is also burned – we are making an enormous contribution to the en­viron­ment. That's because valuable plastics are recycled into new plastic products, entirely in line with the circular economy. Are you also a pro in terms of correct waste sepa­ra­tion? Do you know what belongs in the yellow recycling bin and what doesn't? Drag the following plastic objects into the waste bin and find out!

Right!

Wrong.

Right!

Right!

4The latest craze: plastic-free

Few people realize that their clothing is contami­nating our oceans. From sweat­pants to fleece jackets – hun­dreds of thousands of minute par­ti­cles are released with every load of laundry washed in the washing machine. These par­ticles can hardly be filtered out in sewage treat­ment plants and wind up in our rivers and ultimately in the oceans. According to a study by Plymouth University, more than 730,000 fibers are released during an average load of laundry washed at 30‑40 degrees Celsius from synthetic materials made out of acrylic fabric. For polyester this number is 496,000 fibers, and for polyester-cotton blen­ded fabrics it is 138,000 particles. A tiny mega-prob­lem Micro­plastics are con­tained above all in sports­wear, but also in socks, pullovers, fleece jackets and much more. You should therefore pay attention to the mate­ri­als when pur­chas­ing new cloth­ing: acrylic, pol­y­ester and nylon into the crop, cotton, linen and hemp into the pot. The best choice is actually organic cotton, because a lot of regular cotton uses an extremely large amount of drinking water in its production. Read more in our article "How to save a planet".

5Don't use cosmetic products with micro­plastic

That's right, manufacturers even use micro­plastic in shower gels and other personal care products, for example as cheap abrasives. The UK and Canada have already banned the use of micro­plastic in cosmetics. And in the US, products with microplastic have been banned from sale since July 1, 2018. In Germany, although some big manu­facturers have announced that they will stop using microplastic, some products still contain microplastic today, as demonstrated by a list com­piled by Friends of the Earth Germany (as of March 2018). That's why it's best to find out yourself by using the Code Check app to find out which super­market products contain micro­plas­tics. Simply scan the bar­code with the app and you will get an overview, including about other harm­ful sub­stances contained in the product.

6A cup of coffee that's good for both your taste buds and the environment

According to Deutsche Umwelthilfe (German Environmental Relief), we throw away an unbelievable 320,000 coffee cups every hour. And that's only in Ger­many. Even leaving out the plastic lid results in an enormous contribution. But reusable cups are an even better choice, at least when they are used for a longer period of time. A particularly elegant ex­ample are the BPA-free coffee cups made from leftover coffee grounds developed by product designer Julian Lechner with his startup company Kaffeeform.

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Since you've been reading this article, %s coffee cups have been thrown away – in Germany alone. We throw away 89 coffee cups every second, according to calculations by Deutsche Umwelthilfe. You should at least avoid using plastic lids, or better yet, switch to reusable cups you bring from home or cups with a return deposit.

7End the packaging madness

The "Original Unverpackt" supermarket chain proves that you can completely avoid packaging at the grocery store. But you can save a lot of plastic in regular supermarkets as well. For example, by selecting loose instead of packaged lettuce. The same applies to fruits and herbs. You can also buy bread without packaging from the bakery, which saves additional valuable grams of plastic compared to packaged bread. Milk, cream, yogurt and mustard also come in glass bottles and jars. And another very impor­tant point: You should always bring your own cloth grocery bags from home instead of using the super­market's plastic bags. This way you can help stop the packaging madness at the grocery store.

8Stop Wasting – Start Caring!

Regarding plastic and packaging waste avoidance, Telekom is making great progress. Here are three examples: The inner part of the Speedport PRO consists of „Post-consumer Plastic“ – fully recycled plastics, that is. In packaging, „PaperFoam“ is used, a sustainable material that can be disposed of in paper bins or compost heaps.

In 2017, Telekom started shrinking the SIM cards and succeeded in reducing plastic waste bei 1.4 tons in 2018. These new SIM cards are used in the „Edeka smart“ mobile phone rate. Additionally, the packaging consist of climate neutral grass paper. In producing this paper – a process that works without chemicals – CO₂ emissions are reduced by 75%.

Also in 2017, Telekom installed new pac­kaging machines. They first figure out the optimum cartonage size and then pro­duced an individually sized card-board box. Superfluous air is there­by removed from the packages and un­neces­sary filling materials can be omitted. That leads to an 50% reduction in card-board and up to 95% less filling materials.

50%

of the card-board are saved by using new packaging machines. The packages are individually sized exactly as needed instead of using standard sizes. In addition, this reduces 95% of the filling material.

9Digital instead of waste

Especially through digitali­zation we can save resources. Storing your photos and data in the cloud instead of on your own harddisk reduces resource consumption – because where there is no harddisk, no re­sources are used up in production, power con­sumption is reduced and there is no waste. We can do even more by utilizing sharing oppor­tuni­ties: Sharing obsoletes buying. 1:0 for resource saving – thanks to Telekom's network!

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