reduce single-use plastic
Plastic is EVERYWHERE. Clothes, cleaning products, food etc.
Some things I do to reduce single-use plastic in my life:
- Reusable bags—ALWAYS
- Carry a reusable water bottle everywhere
- Carry reusable silverware, too
- Don’t put produce in plastic bags, just wash it at home
- Shop bulk grocery with reusable containers
- Bulk doesn’t mean extra-large product sizes, it means no consumer packaging at all
- Spices, coffee and tea, pasta, granola, flour, chocolate, beans, grains—so much can be found in bulk when you look for bulk grocery stores
- Reduce and limit take out and delivery meals
- Skip to-go coffees unless it can be in a refillable container (damn you, pandemic)
🚧 ⚠️ Rough Terrain Ahead ⚠️ 🚧
🛑 What’s this? ✍️ This whole note is a work in progress, but the below part is really rough. So why’s it here? Share ideas before they’re ready.
While we try to prevent un-recyclable materials from entering our house to begin with, it’s nearly impossible to do, so we spend a lot of effort working to reduce what we do use. For almost all plastics, and many other materials, we pay a local business to take buckets and tubs of our un-recyclable waste and give/sell it to people and businesses who actually want it.
I look at it as a tax on the convenience of single-use items like food bars, frozen food, to-go iced coffees, and medication containers, in addition to being an excellent way to care for the un-recyclable materials that so frequently make it into our home.