How would you rate yourself when it comes to sustainability habits? In honor of World Environment Day today, a new survey looks at how Americans are doing with sustainability, and it turns out, we have a lot of room for improvement.
According to the poll of 2-thousand U.S. adults, only 11% would give themselves an A+ for their sustainability efforts. And almost a quarter (23%) of respondents would grade themselves a C or lower.
- While 77% claim to try to be as wasteless as possible, people throw away an average of 12 items on any given day.
- That adds up to almost three bags of trash a week, or 150 bags in a year.
- While millennials are most likely to give themselves an A+ for their eco-friendly efforts (15%), they average the most trash in a day, tossing about 15 things daily.
- Unsurprisingly, the kitchen is the room that generates the most waste, four times more than the second place room, the bathroom.
- Respondents cook an average of seven times a week, and 48% have the goal of making meals they won’t waste.
- For 41%, food waste is “always” or “often” on their mind when they’re cooking, but respondents estimate that around a fifth (18%) of the food they make gets thrown away.
- To avoid that, more than a quarter (27%) of those polled try to use “sustainability hacks” in the kitchen, like making veggie stock from vegetable scraps and checking food in the fridge and freezer to use what’s expiring next.
- Nearly seven in 10 (69%) admit they feel at least a little guilty when using disposable items like plastic bags (29%), disposable water bottles (28%) and plastic or paper plates (22%).
- Overall, two-thirds of respondents think they can do a better job of reducing the amount of stuff they throw away.
Source: SWNS Digital