Brush with Bamboo was founded on a simple idea: that the products we use on a daily basis, from toothbrushes to plates to straws, should be healthy for us and healthy for the planet that we live on. In our modern society, we produce billions of single-use products each year that will not break down for thousands of years and will pollute soil, oceans, and rivers throughout their lifetime. At Brush with Bamboo, they find this concept to be not just nonsensical, but also unecological and uneconomical.
Some facts on plastic that have inspired us to make a change:
- Half of the 300 million tons of plastic produced each year is used only once
- More than 40 percent of plastic is used to create packaging
- Hundreds of billions of plastic bags are used annually around the globe, with one million being used each minute.
- The typical plastic bag is used for 15 minutes but may take over 1000 years to decompose
- In the US, every year 100 billion plastic beverage bottles are used with 57 percent used for water.
- A collection of garbage off the California coast is twice the size of Texas. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has six times as much plastic as there is sea life in the area.
- Of the material in the collection of garbage in the Pacific Ocean, 80 percent comes from the land
- The chemicals in plastic, like BPA, are found in 93 percent of people over age six
- The amount of plastic being produced is increasing exponentially. In the past decade, more plastic was produced than the preceding century.
