If all the garbage you have ever thrown out was put in one place how many football fields would it fill? America is drowning in garbage. Our products are over packaged in non-natural materials and we are polluting our land with reams of plastic packages whose chemicals seep into the earth.

I try to make a conscious effort to choose the product with the least amount of packaging. It is obscene how many layers of plastic some products are wrapped in. Does everything needs its own hard plastic container? No, of course not, but most of our products arrive this way.

America's dumps are full of product packaging that wasn't needed in the first place. What kind of earth are we leaving for the next generation when we keep filling it with refuse?

When shopping avoid products that are over packaged. If you love a certain product that is over packaged write a letter to the manufacturer and urge them to minimize the packaging and make environmental concerns a priority. Send e-mails to the presidents of companies urging them to update their product packaging and to devise ways to eliminate excess packaging.

Save your packaging trash for a few days and see how many garbage bags it fills. Then shop more carefully and do this experiment again. Keep reducing your use of products with packaging until your trash is minimal and your guilt about the environment is too.

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