You don’t have to be Iron Man to save the Earth

Leave it to Tony Stark to try and save the world.

Earlier this summer at Amazon’s Re:Mars conference in Las Vegas, Iron Man and Avengers star Robert Downey, Jr. announced the formation of the Footprint Coalition--aimed at using technology to solve some of the world’s most pressing environmental issues. 

“Between robotics and nanotechnology, we could clean up the planet significantly, if not totally, in 10 years,” Downey told the crowd, according to Variety. 

It’s a bold prediction--one more fitting of a superhero than an actor. 

The truth is Downey Jr. will need all the help he can get when it comes to tackling one of the biggest environmental challenges we face today: the overuse of single-use plastics.

A report released last year by the United Nations found that the total economic damage to the world’s marine ecosystem caused by plastics amounts to at least $13 billion each year. That same report predicted that continuing at the current pace of plastic use would result in nearly 12 billion tons of plastic in landfills and the environment worldwide by 2050.  

Downey, Jr. isn’t alone in his crusade to fight back against pollution. Projects like The Ocean Cleanup, which aims to eliminate half of the Pacific Garbage Patch in 5 years by deploying large-scale collection systems, shows the level of ambition some of the world’s leading thinkers have when it comes to ridding the world of pollution.

This work to clean up the millions of tons of plastic in our oceans and environment is important--and should be celebrated. But it’s only half the battle.

Truly ending the single-use plastics crisis requires everyone to reduce--or completely eliminate--their use of plastics in the first place. A great place to start this mission is by focusing on plastic bags. 

The UN estimates that 1-5 trillion plastic bags are consumed each year--that’s almost 10 million plastic bags per minute. Imagine if we cut our usage down by just 10 percent. It could have a significant impact.

This where the idea for our Jill and Joey Reusable Pouches stems from. They may not be as high-tech as AI or as ambitious as an ocean-cleanup apparatus, but let’s face it: not everyone can be Tony Stark.

We operate under a simple mission: Let’s make the world reusable. We’re excited to help you make small changes that can have a huge impact on our environment.