5 Tips for a Plastic Free Office!

BSIbio is one of many companies that joined the Plastic-Free July Challenge. What is that? It’s quite simple: Attempt to refuse single-use plastic during the month of July! At BSIbio, we took simple, day-to-day actions to drastically reduce our use of disposable plastic. Here’s what we did:

DAY 1 – WATER BOTTLE MIX & MATCH

We kept it simple and brought our reusable water bottles to the office. At BSIbio we use our water bottles for hiking, biking and circus performance! How do you use yours?

Plastic bottles are one of the #1 items in global plastic pollution.

DAY 2 – NUDE LUNCH

Keep your food nude. With a bit of prep the night before, we all brought our lunches packed in reusable containers!

Single-use, landfill-bound, take-out packaging is another major contributor to our plastic pollution problem.

DAY 3 – COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE

A team coffee run, using our reusable mugs! We found it boosted morale, productivity, and – of course – our caffeine levels.

At BSIbio, we love our coffee. We wanted to reduce the amount of disposable coffee cups that we used. Yes, we sell disposable compostable coffee cups. When  you can’t go reusable, be sure to go compostable!   

DAY 4 – BRING IT HOME

We found an easy recipe for DIY moisturizer. It was surprisingly simple, a great team-bonding exercise and, best of all, plastic-free!

Plastic waste is not only created at the office.

DAY 5 – WHAT DO WE WASTE?

It is hard to eliminate waste completely, even when we are conscious of our actions. We started by looking at our waste in an average week. Our waste audit before the Plastic Free July Challenge showed our biggest waste culprits to be label paper (23%), soft plastics such as ziplock bags and granola bar wrappers (10%), and disposable coffee cups (2.5%).

During our Plastic-Free July Challenge, we made some great improvements:

• We reduced our use of soft plastics from 10% to 1.9%
• Disposable coffee cups went down from 2.5% to 0%
• Our overall waste volume decreased by 43%!

While BSIbio didn’t end the week with zero waste, we were excited about how much we reduced! Doing the before and after audits were a key part of this challenge, meaning that we finished this challenge excited about our reductions, rather than disappointed about not having an empty garbage bin. 

Happy Plastic-Free July! You can join the Plastic-Free Challenge too.

Watch for more BSIbio tips for decreasing use of disposable plastics at the end of July!