Fall is my favorite season. The weather cools, the air is less humid, the colors change, and it is more enjoyable to be outdoors. I love the family memories we’ve made. We’ve played in fall leaves, hunted pumpkin patches for the best pumpkins, picked apples, and enjoyed the smells and flavors of autumn. And of course, Halloween is one of our favorite holidays!
But the waste from Fall can be great. For Halloween alone, Americans will spend $13.1 billion in 2025, according to the National Retail Federation.1 With that comes a great deal of waste: Halloween costumes, candy, food, and beverages come with a lot of disposable plastic packaging. In the current economy, I think most of us need to save money, and we need to limit waste.
Zero waste is such a great concept, but not always practical. If we aspire toward limited waste, that will still make a huge difference to the environment, our homes, and our psyches.
Here are some ways you can save money, be healthier, and limit waste this Fall!
Pumpkin Spice Everything
Image by Ylanite Koppens from Pixabay.
Besides the traditional pumpkin spice coffee, there’s now pumpkin spice-flavored everything…from cereal and cookies to candles and hand soap, and even baked goods and dairy products. My son insisted I buy pumpkin spice-flavored whipped cream at the grocery store this week! I say indulge in a treat or two, but resist the urge to buy pumpkin spice everything, especially those products that come in disposable packaging (such as whipped cream in a metal can, which is not recyclable where we live). Though that and one pumpkin spice latte is all we’ve bought this season, so we’ve limited waste in this category.
You can always make your own pumpkin spice bread, coffee, or cupcakes at home. This will save money and limit waste, and maybe even be healthier. (Then the house will smell good, too.)
Also, if you get a pumpkin-spice latte or coffee, drink it at the coffee shop in a ceramic mug – or bring your own insulated travel mug!
Pumpkins & Jack O’Lanterns
Image by Mayur Gadge from Pixabay.
Who doesn’t love the sight of a beautiful pumpkin? Many use them as decorations, and though expensive, this is far better than buying cheap plastic decorations that are likely to break or degrade quickly. Especially if you compost or consume the pumpkin before it starts to rot.
It’s better to pick your pumpkins at a pumpkin patch because freshly cut pumpkins last much longer than pre-picked ones from the store. Plus, picking your own pumpkins from a patch is a lot more fun!
If you’re going to carve a Jack O’Lantern, save the seeds to make a great snack! My son looks forward to this part almost more than the Jack O’Lantern part, honestly. This limits waste, and it is a super healthy snack.
Simply scoop the seeds, wash them and separate them from the pumpkin pulp, and dry them on a towel. Next, season them with extra virgin olive oil, Kosher salt, and cumin powder. Place on a baking sheet in a single layer, and roast at 275° for 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. Then eat!
If you can get to an apple orchard, this is a wonderful way to celebrate fall. There is nothing more delicious and healthy than a crisp, fresh-picked apple. At most self-pick orchards, you can purchase a basket that you return with every year, instead of using plastic bags. Picking apples is healthier because the fruit is local and fresher (though not necessarily less expensive than apples from the grocery store). You’re likely also supporting a small business.
You can bake any number of apple yumminess and with limited waste, especially if you compost the apple peels and cores. Or, make apple cider vinegar from them (which I’ve done with only mixed success). That would make it zero waste!
Bonus if you go to an orchard where you pick apples and a pumpkin!
Photo by Marie Cullis.
Fall Leaves
Image by Urszula from Pixabay.
This is an easy category to limit waste. If you read my article on Fall leaves disposal, then you already know that leaves should never be bagged in plastic or sent to the landfill. Fall leaves biodegrade on the ground, in the compost, or in the woods. I don’t recommend burning because they can spark and start fires, and also because the smoke is not healthy to breathe, even from a distance. Check with your local municipal entity to see how you can safely discard leaves. Please read my article for additional information.
Halloween Costumes
Photo by Phillip Pessar on Flickr, Creative Commons license (CC BY 2.0).
New costumes can contain chemicals, come in plastic packaging, and are expensive. The easiest way to save money, limit plastic packaging waste, and be healthier is to buy costumes second-hand, from any store that sells used clothing. The materials will have already off-gassed, making them less toxic to you.
The next simplest method for costuming is using what you already have at home, which limits waste and saves money. Trading costumes with friends or getting them at clothing swaps/sales is also an option.
Or, you can do a combination of those.
While I have purchased a brand-new costume once, my son usually insists on piecing together his own costume (and not for environmental reasons). Last year, he wanted to be Roronoa Zoro from the One Piece anime series. He wanted a costume like this:
Online, the costume was more than $50, packaged in plastic, and did not include the earring or swords!
At the thrift store, we bought a small women’s white shirt with an opening at the chest, and rolled up the sleeves. We then found a black and green striped shirt that I cut up and resewed into the haramaki and the tie on his arm. I also found a pair of children’s black pants in his size at the same thrift store. We used a black bandana that we already had at home for his head, since he couldn’t dye his hair green due to a theatrical performance he was in at the time. And he already owned the three play swords.
Photo by Marie Cullis.
The most challenging part was the three-piece earring. Since my son’s ears aren’t pierced, I decided to make something similar to what Zoro wears. I made this earring from a paper clip to form a “clip-on” earring, and attached three pieces of nose bridge strips for cloth masks (bought during Covid times) and painted them gold. I was pretty proud of this costume and thought he looked amazing!
Photo by Marie Cullis.
For more Halloween costume ideas, Pinterest is a great resource. Also, Kathryn Kellogg has a great article and video on Halloween costumes you may already have in your closet, which I’ve linked in the footnotes below.2
Halloween Candy
Photo by Marie Cullis.
This is a difficult waste stream to avoid, but it can be done.
If you’re giving out candy, there are lots of options! Read my article on Halloween candy wrapper waste to find ways to avoid plastic waste. The best option is to buy individually wrapped candy in bulk (like foil wrapped chocolates) or boxed candy (Junior Mints, Milk Duds, Nerds, etc).
If you’re trick-or-treating, navigating that waste stream is much more challenging. The best approach is to recycle any wrappers you can (paper, cardboard, etc.) and limit the amount of candy you bring home. You can’t control what others give out, and you’re grateful that they are spending their hard-earned money on giving free candy to hordes of children, including yours. It’s best to limit how much you collect, and if you get too much, share it with friends, family, or coworkers.
Happy Fall and Happy Halloween!
Image by Alexa from Pixabay.
I hope this article gave you some ideas about how to save money and limit waste. Leave me a comment if you have a question or suggestion. Thanks for reading, and please subscribe. Have a lovely Fall and Halloween!
After reading the new book, Year of No Garbage: Recycling Lies, Plastic Problems, and One Woman’s Trashy Journey to Zero Waste, I had the pleasure of interviewing author Eve O. Schaub. She was fun to speak with and very passionate about the subject matter. I loved the way our conversation flowed between funny and serious.
Seriously, she’s great to talk to. She’s very relatable, enthusiastic, and extremely knowledgeable. She explains complex matters in an honest and open way. We’ve all experienced conundrums with garbage and recycling at times, some of which have no resolution. She makes the reader understand that we aren’t alone in this. Plus, the book is quite an entertaining story!
The Beginning
Schaub has written three books within this paradigm: Year of No Sugar, Year of No Clutter, and Year of No Garbage. I wanted to know how it all started and how it transpired from No Sugar to No Clutter to No Garbage. She had seen an online talk by a pediatric endocrinologist, Dr. Robert H. Lustig, who associates sugar with many of the most common western diseases. “I was captivated by this. I mean, I’m not in the habit of sitting around and watching 90-minute medical lectures,” she laughed. But she found that his findings made so much sense. “It was like I had been given a new pair of glasses. I saw the world in a completely different way.” Schaub decided to make this a writing project. “What could be more important than the health of our families and the food that we put on our table?”
What would it take to eliminate sugar? Schaub thought that it couldn’t be that hard, so she convinced her family to live for one year without consuming added sugar, with a few exceptions. She drew inspiration from authors, such as Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life) and Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), who created a set of rules for a specific period and then reported on it. As she would come to find out, it is actually very difficult to eliminate sugar because it’s in everything.
After finishing her first book, Schaub said Year of No Clutter felt like a very natural next project. She stated it was more of a personal project for her because the root of the clutter in her home was her. “As the self-confessed polar opposite of Marie Kondo, I spent a year confronting my inner hoarder and wrote a book.”1This journey led to the idea of Year of No Garbage.
Image by Nathan Copley from Pixabay.
No Garbage
The idea of garbage and what happens to it had captivated Schaub since childhood. Trash is a given thing in our culture, and most people never give it a second thought. “Trash is like weeds. Right? Weeds are only plants that are in the wrong place…that’s the same with trash. There’s no such thing as trash, it’s just whatever we say it is. It’s in the wrong place, it’s inconvenient, we don’t know what to do with it,” she said.
What’s more impressive is Schaub did this during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. While many actually found it significantly harder to have less trash that year than any other, her family managed to do it by following a pre-established set of rules. She said it was a good distraction during a time when we were forced to slow down, and she felt it provided a good opportunity to reset and rethink.
“I kept trying to remind myself that the very fact that trying to live without garbage is super difficult—and at times virtually impossible—was the whole darned point: if it were easy there wouldn’t be much to write about, and everyone would probably already be doing it, and the earth would be a happier, less trashy, more equitable, less cancer-filled, less disaster-prone place. The End.”2
Photo by Gary Chan on Unsplash.
Plastics
Plastics are the hardest type of garbage to deal with, and there’s so much of it. Schaub acknowledged that it’s nearly impossible to avoid buying food without plastic packaging. “You’d have to live in a cave and grow all your own food in the ground, and drink from a stream. I mean, that’s how hard it is…That’s how ingrained it is.” But if we know this, we can work to turn off the plastic tap and think about ways to use less.
Most people don’t realize that plastic is made from oil and chemicals. Big Oil is openly planning to triple its plastic production by 2050. “And they’re proud of it!” Schaub exclaimed. “Do we need three times the amount of plastic in our lives than we already have now?! No, I don’t think anybody thinks that. But they are looking for new markets. They’re trying to increase profits, especially in the wake of people buying [and] turning to electric cars, for example. They’re going to be selling less oil in other departments because of environmental initiatives.” Capitalism drives everything in our culture, and Big Oil is one of the most aggressive industries. Those are the forces we are up against, she said.
“The plastic waste crisis is horrible, but it’s not your fault. It is the fault of forces that are beyond each individual person’s control. This is corporations. This is Big Oil.”
She mentioned that personal responsibility is not the sole solution, but that awareness is the key. Films such as The Story of Plastic, which highlights the global problem of the people whose lives are negatively affected by our waste; videos of a sea turtle with a straw in its nose; and images of dead albatross with stomachs full of plastics are disturbing. But they are powerful because they raise awareness.
Dead Laysan Albatross with plastic in its stomach at Harbor Sand Island, Midway Atoll. March 31, 2015. Photo by Forest and Kim Starr on Wikimedia, Creative Commons license (CC BY 3.0 US).
Recycling
Single-stream recycling is a lie, especially when it comes to plastic, the author acknowledged. Knowing that the plastic recycling rate is only 5% is crushing, because people try so hard to do it properly and follow the rules. Yet, most plastic is landfilled. “Every other material has a place to go and has a way to break down. Or be made into something new.” Schaub said that after five decades of recycling, “five percent is the best we can do?!? That’s shocking.”
Single-stream (curbside) recycling often collects plastics with RIC numbers 1-7. But most of those (#3-7) are not recycled and end up in developing countries. “If I know that my plastic is being shipped to Malaysia and Myanmar and Thailand, I’m going to be hesitant to put it in recycling at all because I know that that’s the system in place,” she explained. “These are our plastics that are being shipped across the sea to litter the landscapes of developing nations that do not have the infrastructure to deal with it. You literally have children playing in our waste plastic. And the list of countries is long…these people are living in our trash plastic…this is an environmental justice issue. This is racism.” We have the impression that we are doing a wonderful thing when we put plastic in the recycling bin instead of the landfill, but that is unfortunately sometimes false.
“In the name of recycling, countries around the world are suffering.”
Child garbage recycler in Saigon, holding a bag with cans from companies like Coca-Cola. Photo by etoile on Flickr, Creative Commons license (CC-BY 2.0).
The Role of Corporations and Industries
I asked Schaub: “How do we get these corporations to do the right thing? Because at every turn, like you talk about in your book, they’re looking for a new stream of revenue. How do we get them to stop?” Schaub responded, “Well, they won’t stop, because financially, it doesn’t make sense for them to stop. So we can’t really turn to the corporations too much. I mean, we can try.” But they are always going to put profits first. For example, Coca-Cola has been making environmental promises for decades. But they don’t actually fulfill those promises, “because there’s no sheriff in town,” she said. There are no entities that make sure companies fulfill their promises when it comes to plastic and other environmental endeavors.
“We need more transparency…we need to have a sheriff.”
Schaub observed that industries often put the responsibility on the consumer, in that we shouldn’t buy those things, or that we don’t recycle properly. But it is the industry that should be making better products. “There are a lot of parallels between plastic and sugar, actually. It all comes down to something that’s cheap and it’s easy and it’s convenient and that’s why it’s everywhere, in the case of both of those things…The industry does not have an incentive to do better.” There is an illusion of choice for the consumer as well. There may be 30 types of bread at the supermarket but only one of them will not have added sugar in it. The same is true with plastic. “Try buying cheese without buying plastic. It’s incredibly hard!” Schaub is right – I’ve never been able to buy plastic-free cheese, anywhere.
“Personal responsibility is very important, [and] personal awareness. But if I go buy a bamboo toothbrush and a shampoo bar, that’s good, but it’s not going to fix the overall systemic cultural problem that we’re encountering.”
Legislation May Be the Most Important Focus
Schaub says turning to legislation is perhaps more important than asking corporations to change. She said that proposed bills such as The Break Free from Pollution Act and the United Nations Plastic Pollution Treaty, as well as state and local legislation, show us progress. There are plastic bag and plastic straw bans where she lives, and there is even a charge for paper grocery bags in Vermont. “This is the low-hanging fruit. You have to start somewhere,” she said. (I didn’t tell her that my state, Tennessee, has a law banning bans on plastic and polystyrene containers.) The hope is that more states and municipalities will do the sensible thing. “The more we ask, the more available it will become.” Asking puts in your vote as a consumer!
Diet Coke plastic bottle floating in a body of water. Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay.
Toxic Chemicals
Plastic packaging is often full of toxins that can leach into many things, including food and beverages. “Avoid plastic packaging especially when it comes to food whenever you can. And definitely do not heat your food in plastic,” Schaub said. Don’t put plastic in the dishwasher because the heat releases the toxic chemicals in plastic, and most of the time we don’t know what’s in those plastics.
“It’s amazing to me that when you go to the supermarket, and you buy a food product, they have to tell you what’s in that food…But nobody has any obligation to tell you what’s in the packaging. That’s another instance of where we assume that ‘well, this has to be safe,'” she said. But they may not be! There are so many chemicals and the formulas are often proprietary and secret. “Plastic and food need to stay way the heck away from each other, as much as possible.”
“It’s one thing when you’re talking about ‘the ice caps are melting and the polar bears are starving,’ and nobody likes that – that’s bad! But when you start putting toxic chemicals into my body, suddenly I’m paying even more attention…or, when you’re talking about putting those same chemicals into the bodies of my children…I think that’s probably what it’s going to take, is for people to start understanding that connection between plastics and our health, and all the negative effects that can be correlated. The same thing with sugar. When you start connecting the dots, it’s very alarming. And of course, sugar and plastic are so often used in conjunction, from candy bars to all the soda, it’s like they are best friends!”
Most candy bars are wrapped in plastic. Photo by Denny MĂĽller on Unsplash.
Avoiding Garbage Changes The Way We Purchase
I asked Schaub what items she’d stopped buying because of Year of No Garbage. She laughed, “I had quite a love affair with paper towels. I was the person who went to the supermarket every week and bought the largest bale, like a hay bale, of paper towels.” She explained that sometimes the large bales have individually plastic-wrapped rolls in addition to the outer plastic wrap. “Horrible! But I realized that there were so many times that I could avoid using paper towels very simply, by just having dish towels on hand…or I’ve got rags that I’ve made from cutting up really old towels or sheets. That’s what I use for cleaning now…and I get a great sense of satisfaction out of that…I have incorporated [it] into my life, it’s part of my routine now. So now I just do it without even thinking about it. It does take some effort to set up a new routine. And there is discomfort in that.”
But it was manageable. And she still uses paper towels but significantly less. “I went from going through a hay bale of paper towels every week to now, I buy one roll at a time, and I’ll have it for weeks.” If you don’t want to use a certain item, like paper towels or sugar, the best thing to do is to avoid bringing them into your home. That will automatically discourage use.
Avoiding Plastics
Schaub and I agree that it’s best to avoid plastics whenever possible. And when you do have to buy something with plastic, it’s almost better to put them into the landfill than to try to recycle them. “I feel like that’s a much more honest approach. If I have something that’s going to go to the landfill, I’m just going to put it right in there and accept that’s the only thing that can happen to this piece of plastic…but knowing that will now cause me to be ever more vigilant to try and avoid buying that product,” she said.
For me, that has been items such as bottled shampoo, plastic straws, and plastic shower curtains. Once I became aware of the problems with those things, I stopped bringing them into my home. We switched to shampoo bars and have never reverted back to liquid shampoo. We don’t need a straw for most drinks; when we do, we have metal straws. And though I’ve had my trials and tribulations with fabric shower curtains, I have not had a plastic one in the house for 10 years. As for paper towels, I also use very few and the ones I purchase are plastic-free.
Normalizing Environmental Actions
I was telling Schaub that I routinely keep two clean glass containers in my car with my cloth shopping bags. This way, if I’m at a restaurant and want to take my leftovers home I can do so without having my food touch toxic Styrofoam (polystyrene). But while bringing your own bags to the supermarket is common now, bringing my glass containers to a restaurant is still kind of weird to people. She affirmed, “I think this is all about normalizing it, right? If somebody is standing next to you when you go and use that container at the butcher or the restaurant, they see you doing that and they go ‘Huh! That’s interesting.’ And it starts the process of becoming more normal. And that’s a wonderful thing we can do. We’re not just helping ourselves, we’re progressing this whole idea forward.”
“Awareness is the beginning of all meaningful change.”
Glass container with bamboo lid from IKEA.
Living Intentionally
Schaub said that all three projects permanently changed how her family lives and consumes in the world. This is because they can’t ‘unknow’ the information they’ve learned. She also liked the symmetry of the three projects because she felt like her family came full circle. “We started with the things that we put into our bodies, and then I focused on the things we bring into our homes, and then lastly I focused on the things that we’re putting into the environment, which, guess what – spoiler alert – because they’re in the environment, they’re now coming around and going back into our bodies as well. And so now we’re finding microplastics in foods because it’s in the dirt! It’s in the produce! It’s in the tap water and the bottled water! These microplastics don’t go away…[plastic] never breaks down.” It turns into microscopic plastic pieces. “But it’s still there, and that’s the stuff that’s going into our bodies as well as into the environment,” she maintained.
Our culture is so busy but when we slow down, we can be more thoughtful and more intentional, including with our resources. She wrote, “As it turns out—and I’m as surprised as anyone about this—living No Sugar, No Clutter and No Garbage all led to the same place: living thoughtfully…Being thoughtful about your space, your resources, your food, where the objects of our life come from and where they all go; devoting the time to put those ideals into practice: getting objects to people who will love and use them, recycling and reusing, cooking as much as possible from basic ingredients.”3
Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash.
Read Year of No Garbage
Schaub’s goal is to spread information and provide people with more information so that they can incorporate it into their lives in a way that makes sense for them. She said that some people read Year of No Garbage and find it an entertaining story. For other readers, it might change everything about the way they shop and discard and recycle. She doesn’t want people to feel shame because guilt isn’t going to make anything better. These are urgent issues and we need to come together. Her book incorporates these ideas, so be sure to check it out!
If you are interested in purchasing Year of No Garbage or any of Schaub’s other works, you can find links on her website.
Read my book review, and please share and subscribe!
Additional Resources:
Book, Year of No Garbage: Recycling Lies, Plastic Problems, and One Woman’s Trashy Journey to Zero Waste, by Eve O. Schaub, Skyhorse Publishing, New York, 2023
Video, “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” Education, Dr. Robert H. Lustig, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, May 26, 2009.
I recently had the pleasure of reading Year of No Garbage by Eve O. Schaub. The book is a great source of well-researched information regarding the huge problems surrounding our waste crisis. I found myself laughing out loud at the many humorous and relatable stories, which help make very real topics like plastic pollution feel more approachable. Especially when those topics can be so complex and depressing!
Photo by Paul Schellekens on Unsplash.
“Our garbage is everywhere, all around us, in our very bodies, and we don’t even realize it. Microplastics have been found in humans’ blood, lungs, the placenta of unborn children, and, most recently, breast milk.”
Garbage is a Problem For Everyone
Garbage doesn’t go away, it just goes somewhere else.
Even the most extreme environmentalists and zero-wasters have found objects for which there is no way to upcycle, recycle, or reuse. Nobody knows what to do with them, so they must go in the garbage. Many environmentalists often don’t talk about these types of items, but Schaub puts those stories front and center.
For example, in Year of No Garbage, she included a hilarious story about a Styrofoam-filled beanbag that her cats had peed on. There was no saving or repurposing it so she had to trash it. Her husband thought her blog readers would ‘crucify’ her for having something like this that was dumpster-bound. But she thought this was the point entirely! “I mean, I have to talk about this, right? This is what the whole thing is about. I mean: look at this. Things like this should not exist.”
The stuff – meaning the plastics and Styrofoams and disposables – pervades every part of our lives. It is almost impossible to not come in contact with them constantly. In fact, Shaub tried just going a single day without touching plastic and found it nearly impossible. That is, she had to avoid the toilet, the soap dispenser, her cell phone, pen, computer, yoga mat, light switches, etc. “I couldn’t drive anywhere, because cars are 50 percent plastic. This was probably just as well, because I also couldn’t wear my glasses.” Even books and magazines often have a plastic coating on the covers. On her blog, she commented:
“I still hate plastic and everything it is doing to us, but this impossible day gave me a newfound understanding of what we are really up against. Who knew that in only a few short decades our society could have so thoroughly encased ourselves in mysterious plastic chemicals, to the point that doing without them immobilizes us? Recently I had happened upon an article in the New York Times, ‘Life Without Plastic Is Possible. It’s Just Very Hard.’ I beg to differ—and I speak from experience.”3
Photo by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash.
RecyclingÂ
One way the author attempted to reduce her family’s garbage was to recycle everything she could. But this wasn’t easy as just throwing it in a blue bin. One of the chapter titles, “I Become the Sherlock Holmes of Recycling . . . or at Least Watson,” referred to the vast amounts of research it took to recycle many items. “There are so many things about recycling that we just don’t know, that prevent us from doing it correctly and efficiently, and I was pretty much spending every waking moment trying to figure them all out.”
Plastic’s rate of recycling used to be just 9%, but has fallen even lower to between 5 and 6 percent. And that’s typically only plastics with a resin code of 1 or 2. The rest is often shipped off to other countries, where they often do not have the infrastructure to deal with these plastics. “No matter what your garbage service provider is telling you, numbers 3, 4, 6, and 7 are not getting recycled.”
Schaub noted that recycling programs are flawed and often don’t work. That includes everything from single-stream/curbside to extreme recycling programs like TerraCycle. “But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up. What I am giving up on is the myth of personal responsibility…it took me an entire year of looking and asking and researching to finally accept what so many have long suspected…Plastic recycling does not work. Extreme ‘recycling’ programs are not trustworthy.” She wrote that legislation (with enforcement) regarding plastics, chemicals, and waste will be what makes the most difference. That is how we can get corporations to make better products and packaging, as well as use less toxic ingredients.
“Before the Year of No Garbage, did I love that I could buy a package of lovely, sealed, organic ground beef at the supermarket that would keep good for much, much longer than other, mere mortal organic ground beef? Of course—it’s convenient and efficient. It reduces food waste and saves money. Longer shelf life probably even made my supermarket more likely to carry organic meat in the first place. But where Intergalactic Space Plastic reduces waste of food, it creates waste of something arguably even worse: permanent, forever garbage. At least wasted food, if composted, can degrade back into the environment.”
A seagull with trash in its mouth. Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.
Garbage Reduction
There are so many things that most of us absent-mindedly throw away because we don’t know what else to do with them. This book teaches us to think about trash differently – whether we recycle, give items a second life, or avoid buying certain items in the first place.
Schaub’s family was able to greatly reduce their garbage, mostly by paying closer attention to what they bought. They made incremental changes, such as “eliminating paper towels, instituting a burn pile for small and unrecyclable paper, collecting wine corks and plastic caps to donate for school craft projects, composting all food scraps (not just some),” collecting plastic film for the bin at the supermarket, washing and recycling their aluminum foil, and avoiding the purchase of disposable items as much as possible.
Schaub recommended not using garbage bags. “Garbage bags are black holes, I realized. They encourage things to be thrown in them, things we’d rather not think about or deal with. Not having a bag in the bin means no messy organic material (which should really all be going into the compost anyway) but it also means, when I empty it, that’s one more time I think about my garbage and what it is composed of.” She uses pet food bags to bring trash to the dump.
“Instead of that ninety-six-gallon trash bin we used to fill each and every week, today we fill one-half of a kitchen-sized garbage bag every week, always composed pretty much entirely of single-use plastic food packaging that I couldn’t figure out how to avoid. We have gone from 96 gallons of trash per week to 9.”
Photo by Nareeta Martin on Unsplash.
Zero Waste Is Extremely Difficult
“There’s a lot of stuff out there masquerading as useful and sustainable, when it’s really just more stuff…As the Zero Wasters like to say, the most environmental purchase is the one you didn’t make.”
It is very difficult to go completely zero waste in our modern society. “Zero waste is a lovely idea,” Schaub wrote. But “the number of people who are both willing and able to genuinely go full bore zero waste under our existing system is so small as to be statistically insignificant. Which means, effectively, that even though it is technically possible, it is not realistic. And it’s not going to fix anything.” Fossil fuel companies are the biggest drivers of emissions and plastics production. They don’t have any plans to put themselves out of business.
But we have to keep trying.
“I’m not suggesting that just because personal responsibility will not solve the problems of garbage and plastic and climate change, we should all just throw in the towel. Forget it! Hand me that plastic straw! Turtles be damned! No. What I’m saying is that personal behavior changes are never going to be enough all on their own, because the forces at work are so enormous.”
Photo by the blowup on Unsplash.
Intentionality
Schaub wrote that being intentional is key to making any great change, whether it is at home or through legislation. We can all do better if we know better. We can all become more intentional in our lives. This is one of the greatest lessons we can learn from minimalism even if we are not minimalists. She wrote:
“If the unexamined life isn’t worth living, it follows that living mindfully gives us purpose. I hope my kids will live life with a sense of curiosity about the world and our place in it. I hope that if something doesn’t seem right, they’ll know that blind acceptance is not their only option; that even if one person might not be able to solve the problems of the environment, global warming, racial and environmental injustice, we can start the conversation, change minds, reveal a wrong, by the simple act of slowing down and taking a closer look.”
Read the Year of No Garbage!
I highly recommend reading this book! It’s fun, interesting, and full of well-researched information and first-hand experiences. A Year of No Garbage resonated so much with me because I have run into many of the same roadblocks and situations with plastics and garbage. I have struggled with replacing my plastic shower curtain with non-plastic. It was difficult to find alternatives to take-out containers made from Styrofoam (polystyrene) because of their toxicity. I also stopped paying for garbage bags and now just reuse dog food bags or I upcycled my own from shipping envelopes.
Understanding some of the problems surrounding waste in our society is the key to being able to change it. Schaub wrote, “As I’d learned with our other two projects, even when you are supposedly ‘done,’ you are not done at all. In fact, in some ways, that is when the hardest work begins. After all, the whole point of the crazy year-long project is to change how we do things so dramatically that it changes us.”
I had the opportunity to interview Eve O. Schaub, and I look forward to sharing that with you in my next article! In the meantime, you can check out her blog. Thanks for reading, please share and subscribe!
Footnotes:
All quotes from this article are from Year of No Garbage: Recycling Lies, Plastic Problems, and One Woman’s Trashy Journey to Zero Waste, by Eve O. Schaub, Skyhorse Publishing, New York, 2023, unless otherwise cited.
I haven’t bought trash bags in more than four years.
How on Earth is that possible? I can’t wait to tell you!
Paying for trash
Image by cocoparisienne on Pixabay
We are intentionally paying for something we are going to throw away.
We all pay for garbage removal in some form, whether through municipal or property taxes or through a waste management service. On top of that, the traditionally accepted way of containing this trash is single-use plastic trash bags. We pay for new plastic bags, made from fossil fuels, to deposit and remove waste from our homes.
Every time consumers purchase plastic, we are supporting the plastics industry and fueling the effort to harvest more fossil fuels. Then we take those bags we paid for and put them in the ground. We are paying to throw stuff away.
“The first plastic garbage bag was produced in 1950. Globally, these bags collect 7.4 million tons of waste each day.”4
I’ve saved quite a bit of money by not buying trash bags. Trash bags range from $4 per box up to $12 per box depending on size, strength, flexibility, and even scent. Advertisers want you to believe that the most expensive trash bags will keep your home clean and sanitary. This is not a new trend, but one that has been accelerated by companies such as Glad Products (owned by Clorox) who conducted surveys and discovered that many Americans believe any bad smell means their home is dirty (or rather, fear that other people will think they’re house is dirty). Worse, scented trash bags likely contain phthalates (commonly referred to as “fragrances”) which are usually endocrine and hormone disruptors that can cause serious health problems over time. These scents may mask the odor of your garbage, but at what cost to your health?
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Another marketing trend to be aware of is “biodegradable” or bioplastic trash bags. Don’t be fooled. Nothing, including these bags, breaks down in a landfill. They require an industrial composting facility to biodegrade. “There’s also no telling if harmful additives or chemicals were added during the manufacturing process, and not all bags labeled biodegradable or compostable will actually break down in a compost facility.”5 Recycled plastic trash bags are better than new or ‘virgin’ plastic bags, but I still do not buy these for my home.Â
“Landfills are not meant to encourage decomposition. They are dry and anaerobic spaces that essentially ‘mummify’ anything contained in them, including plastic.”6Â
But now you can stop buying them too.
Necessity
Three years ago, it occurred to me that I was wasting money buying bags just to put in a landfill. Then I read a blog article on myplasticfreelife.com and decided that there really is no need for store-bought plastic garbage bags. “Since we make almost zero trash, and the trash we do make is dry, we don’t have any need for bags to collect it,” the author wrote.[efn_note]Article, “Collecting Garbage Without Plastic Trash Bags?” myplasticfreelife.com, February 15, 2010.[/efn_note] I found that once I eliminated wet garbage, I no longer needed plastic garbage bags.
What is wet garbage?
This mostly refers to food scraps and food waste. If you are able to compost through a municipal service like the ones they have in California, please do so. However, many cities and states do not offer this service as part of their waste management plan, including where we live. My family decided to start our own compost bin, which you can read about here. If you start composting, you will not have wet trash and thus will not need a plastic liner. Best of all, except for the initial cost of implementing a compost bin, composting is free! If you are paying for waste removal directly, you can reduce the amount of trash and frequency of pick-ups (thus cost savings) simply by composting.
About 34% of our waste is food scraps, yard trimmings, and other biological waste.
Waste reduction
We’ve noticed that many neighbors fill their 96-gallon city-issued garbage bin almost every week. We’ve only filled ours once, and that was when we had a major bathroom remodel in our home. But every city household is allotted a 96-gallon garbage bin that is picked up weekly. I haven’t done the exact math, but I believe that that is between 8 and 12 million gallons of garbage per week that our just our city is potentially landfilling.
This must stop. Our globe cannot sustain this level of trash.
City-issued 96-gallon garbage bin, full with a week’s worth of trash from a single household. Photo by me
My family reduced our waste by buying food and other items with as little packaging as possible. We eliminated single-use disposable items and recycled what we could. Striving to be plastic-free and live a minimalist lifestyle reduced our overall trash. With these efforts, combined with composting, our garbage volume went down to about one bag of trash per month!
One bag of trash per month is far from our zero-waste goal, but it’s much less compared to most households. And Chattanooga is not zero-waste friendly.
“Where Does the Garbage Go?” by Colin Dunn on Flickr, Creative Commons license (CC BY 2.0)
Is Trash-Bag Free Possible?
It depends on how much trash you create, where you live, and how trash is transported. Some municipalities require garbage to be bagged. I wanted to stop using trash bags completely. But what I discovered with our city waste haulers is that unbagged garbage tends to either not make it into the trucks and falls on the ground in the neighborhood, or it blows out of the truck while they are driving down the road. In fact, I saw it happening so often that I tried to report the incidents to the city. But I could not obtain enough information about specific trucks while driving to provide good reporting, so nothing came of that. Pay attention to the waste hauling trucks in your area, or call your local municipality and find out if they have measures in place to help prevent these problems.
This garbage truck lost several pieces of trash as I went down the same road, mainly lightweight plastic pieces. The Tennessee River flows through Chattanooga and any waste that gets into the river ends up in the ocean. Photo by me (at a stoplight).
Trash Bag Alternatives
I let our house run out of garbage bags three years ago and haven’t bought any since. However, since we have to use some kind of trash bag, just to keep our trash contained after it is picked up by the city, we use anything that resembles a garbage bag and staple them closed when it is full to prevent spillage. You can use anything! The most common of these includes:
Brown paper bags from the grocery store
Empty dog food bags
Large shopping bags that show up (even though we always use our own cloth bags at the store, these still manage to make their way into my home from shipping, other people, etc.)
Mulch and gravel bags (this is hard to buy in bulk where we live unless you own a truck, so we have to buy it in plastic )
Foil insulation bags (these are from Amazon/Whole Foods – during COVID-19 we had to get grocery store delivery for a while, and this was how they delivered our cold items. We have a couple of dozen of these now and they are not recyclable.)
I also loved finding a use for these items. It felt wrong to buy a trash bag to throw away more bags or paying to bag the bags.
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Looking Forward
I would like to further reduce my waste through less and better packaging, improved zero waste capabilities, striving for plastic-free living, and minimalism. Ideally, someday, I won’t have so many shipping envelopes around. It would be better if I could purchase items in person and locally, which will take not only getting past the pandemic but businesses increasing package-free/plastic-free/zero-waste options in our area as well.
So free yourself from this practice of buying new plastic to almost directly put in the ground. You can stop paying for trash bags today, and use whatever bags come into your home. Thank you for reading, and please subscribe!
Real, or artificial? The great Christmas tree debate, each side with pros and cons. I have never been able to pick a side in this annual conundrum. That is, until I found a great zero-waste solution.
Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels.
Artificial Trees
I grew up with an artificial tree, and that is what we have now. We bought it after buying our home but before starting our plastic-free journey, and before I knew about the potential toxins in artificial Christmas trees. Also, I personally always believed that a fake tree was better since it is reusable. I thought that cutting down a tree was killing it. And I thought that killing a tree just to have it in my home for one holiday seemed selfish and anti-nature.
Most artificial Christmas trees are made of metals and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics, which can be a potential source of hazardous lead. “The potential for lead poisoning is great enough that fake trees made in China are required by California Prop 65 to have a warning label,” according to the National Christmas Tree Association.1
Prop 65, or Proposition 65, provides warnings about significant exposures to chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
PVC also releases gases known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and phthalates that can irritate the eyes, nose, and lungs. I’ve seen recommendations to shop for a PVC-free tree made from polyethylene, which is considered safer and not known to leach harmful chemicals. But this is not easy to find. I did discover that IKEA’s Christmas trees are PVC and BPA-free. Even if you find one, it’s still a plastic tree.
From what I’ve read, it seems that most off-gassing may occur when the tree is new, so unpack it and leave it outside to off-gas for a while before bringing it into your home. According to the American Christmas Tree Association (ACTA), if you purchase an artificial tree, use it for at least six to nine years before replacing it.2
That Smell
Among the arguments I’ve heard for real trees, one of the most common is the smell. Those of us with an artificial tree are relegated to scented pine candles, air fresheners, or scented ornament sticks. However, all of those items that are artificially scented likely contain phthalates and other chemicals that are not safe to breathe. Don’t feel bad for not knowing that, I used to use them, too! But please safely dispose of them now. Look for a soy or beeswax candle, as they are usually much safer. If you have an artificial tree and really want to have that smell in your home, perhaps you can find a few sprigs of pine to put in a vase.
Photo by Loren Cutler on Unsplash.
Real Trees
According to the National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA), approximately 25-30 million trees sold in the U.S. every year. There are close to 350 million trees growing on Christmas Tree farms just in the U.S.3
Tree farms emit oxygen, absorb carbon dioxide, and filter toxins from our air. The NCTA indicates that for every real Christmas tree harvested, 1 to 3 seedlings are planted the following spring. “Christmas tree farms stabilize the soil, protect water supplies and support complex eco-systems.”4
Many Christmas tree farms across the world may be monoculture farms, meaning they only grow a single crop which does not encourage biodiversity and sometimes requires extra pesticides to protect the plants. However, “very few Christmas trees are removed from federal forests, and those that are, are strictly regulated by the U.S. Forest Service.”5
The Great Debate
According to a significant study conducted in 2010, the environmental friendliness of a real or artificial Christmas tree depends upon how a family uses it. “The study found that the environmental impacts of one artificial tree used for more than eight Christmases is environmentally friendlier than purchasing eight or more real cut trees over eight years.”6
ACTA encourages consumers to consider buying a locally grown tree if possible to reduce emissions from traveling to buy it.
Photo by Loren Cutler on Unsplash.
Disposal of Either Type
Real Christmas trees biodegrade or can be recycled. “Real trees are more sustainable because they are biodegradable, unlike plastic trees which fill landfills and cause more harm than good to the environment.”7
The Arbor Day Foundation also offered multiple ways to recycle a real Christmas tree. “There are more than 4,000 local Christmas Tree recycling programs throughout the United States,” according to the NCTA.8
If you plan to replace an artificial tree, donate it before you dispose of it in a landfill. You can donate it to a thrift store, a neighbor, a church, or maybe a homeless shelter. Check with local non-profits, as even your local zoo or school may want one. You could also put it online for free through Freecycle, Nextdoor, or Facebook.
Image from www.rent-a-christmas.com/
The Best Solution: Zero Waste
This year I discovered Christmas Tree rental! This may be the best of both worlds and is a zero-waste option. Tree rental companies deliver the tree to your home or office in a pot and you can decorate it. When the holiday season is over, the rental company will pick it up. This means you can have a real tree annually without cutting one down, and there’s no storage of a plastic tree year-to-year. While this is not a new solution, it is one that is growing.
One Christmas Tree nursery in California notes that their renting program “focuses on zero waste and employs a minimal footprint operation through efficiency and conservation.”9
You’ll also get that smell of fresh pine, the tree will be replanted, the trees provide habitats for wildlife in between the holiday seasons, and they remove carbon dioxide and toxins both from your home and the atmosphere.
This option isn’t available everywhere yet, but be sure to check your state or region. The pricing that I found with various companies ranged from $35-$75, and I saw some as high as $155. But the cost of cutting down a tree is about the same – so why kill a tree?
Let me know if you’ve tried Christmas tree rental and how your experience went. Thanks for reading, and please subscribe. I wish you and your family a very Happy Holidays!
Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash.
Additional Resources:
Article, “Tiny House Family’s Christmas Tree Solution,” Tiny House Talk, December 23, 2018.
Article, “8 Sustainable Ways to Recycle Your Christmas Tree,” Arbor Day Foundation, December 26, 2019.
Guide, “How to recycle: Real Christmas Trees have a second life,” National Christmas Tree Association, accessed December 21, 2020.
If you’re reading about beeswax wraps, chances are that you already know that plastic wrap and plastic Ziploc bags are single-use disposable items and they are unsafe for human health and the environment. Annually in the U.S., we purchase millions of rolls of plastic wrap and boxes of Ziploc bags. They are not recyclable, and in landfills and incinerators, the plastic can release highly toxic chemicals called dioxins. Worse, when plastic gets hot, it can leach chemicals into your food! The best thing to do is to find an alternative: aluminum foil (which is still disposable), reusable glass or metal containers, or beeswax wraps.
Beeswax wraps are simply reusable coated cloth wraps for keeping food items fresh. I discovered them about 3 years ago, and I was immediately excited by the prospect of eliminating disposable plastic wrap! I bought some Abeego brand wraps and have been a convert ever since. They are completely zero waste, they preserve food, and are free from toxic ingredients. Here’s a short video from that company about how to use them:
I believe Abeego was one of the earliest online stores to sell beeswax wraps, and this is exhibited in their quality. There are many other companies and many Etsy shops that make these now, so you have lots of choices. They are a little expensive on the front end, but they last at least a year or longer, and you save money by not buying disposable plastic wrap. And they are compostable at the end of their life, unlike plastic wrap.
Are beeswax wraps DIY-worthy?
Many people ask if they can save money by making their own. I’ve found that it depends on your results. I have invested a lot of my own time and money on DIY wraps and found that they lack the same pliability and texture that I liked from the ones I purchased. That said, there are thousands of DIY recipes and methods for making beeswax wraps on your own. I’ve tried several of them and here’s how I did it.
Fabric
This was the most fun part for me! I love choosing fabric. For this project, I chose medium and large scraps I already had on hand instead of buying new fabric. Make sure you wash the fabric first so that you are starting with clean fabric. Then I measured and cut squares of various sizes with pinking shears.
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Ingredients
It is difficult to get the right concoction of ingredients. Abeego’s wraps are made with a formulation of beeswax, tree resin, and jojoba oil. Their wraps are smooth, adhere well, and smell good. I first made these using beeswax only, and they came out ok. I thought I could improve them by mixing beeswax with pine tree resin and jojoba oil, according to the online instructions I was following. The resin did not spread evenly despite my best efforts and clumped in certain spots. This made the wraps crusty and difficult to use. The ones I made with beeswax only came out better, so on my third trial, I went back to beeswax only. Again, they’re ok and functional, but not the same quality as the purchased versions.
I recently discovered that some companies, such as SuperBee by BeeConscious Company, sell DIY kits with their proprietary formula premixed into a bar for you to make wraps with your own fabric at home. This would save the struggle of trying to calculate the measurements just right. What a cool idea!
You can buy beeswax pellets or grate your own from beeswax bars. I have done both and found grating the bars to be less expensive. But it ruined my grater. Instead, you can chop up the beeswax bar into little pieces and it seems to work just as well.
Chopped beeswax pieces on a beeswax wrap.
Method
I read many online posts about how to make these and found three general methods, of which I’ve tried two. They are:
Oven
Flat iron
Hand dip
The easiest and my favorite method is to place the fabric on a flat cookie sheet and sprinkle the ingredients on the fabric, then put it into the oven at 200-225 degrees (F) for 3-6 minutes. Be prepared to use an old or second-hand cookie sheet, as it is difficult to get all of the beeswax off after.
For the ironing method, lay wax paper* under the fabric on an ironing board, sprinkle the ingredients on the fabric, then lay wax paper on top. Next, iron on a low setting. This method is effective too but more time-consuming than using the oven. The last way involves melting the ingredients in a double boiler and dipping the fabric into it. This is the one I didn’t try because I anticipated the mess I would make.
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Overall, my wraps are functional and I use them all the time in combination with my Abeego wraps. I’ve spent many hours trying to perfect these, and have not achieved the perfect wrap. I am also unable to make any larger than my cookie sheet, so I would have to purchase them if I want extra-large sizes. After lots of trial and error, I think purchasing works best for me. But you may have better results, so don’t let me dissuade you!
Set of my own beeswax wraps
Caring for beeswax wraps
They are very simple to care for whether homemade or purchased! You wash them with mild dish soap and rinse in cool water. I bought a small, square, metal drying rack that hangs above my kitchen sink. I wash, rinse, and hang them on a clip to air dry! Of course, if you buy them, check the recommended care on the package first.
You will know when it is time to cycle out your old wraps, as they will appear dingy or stained. But if you have a few that haven’t been used as frequently, but seem less pliable or sticky than before, you can restore the wraps. I simply spread a small amount of beeswax over the existing wraps and place it in the oven for 2-3 minutes at 200-225 degrees (F).
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SuperBee features a video to restore wraps as well, only without using additional beeswax. They simply put the wrap in a toaster oven to remelt the wax so it spreads back out:
Goodbye, Plastic WrapÂ
Beeswax wraps are a superior food storage solution. They are a great replacement for plastic wraps, plastic Ziploc bags, and plastic food containers. Whether you purchase beeswax wraps or make them, the fact that you are open to getting rid of plastic in your life is awesome and potentially life-changing. If you decide to make them, I encourage you to find quality instructions online to make your own. And if you perfect your method, be sure to comment below and tell me about it!
Thanks for reading, and please subscribe!
*Note: Most wax paper sold today is not actually coated in wax, they are coated with a thin layer of paraffin, which is petroleum-based (plastic-related). In this post, the wax paper I used was a brand called If You Care and sells healthier and environmentally friendly kitchen products. Their wax paper is coated with soybean wax and I put it in the compost when I’m done with it. I bought it at Whole Foods but you can find it online as well.
Photo by If You Care
Additional Resource:
Article:Â “The sticky problem of plastic wrap,” National Geographic, July 12, 2019.
This post does not contain affiliate links nor did I get paid to promote the products in this post. All photos by Marie Cullis unless otherwise noted.
In my last article, I wrote about several companies offering cleaning products with refill options. Today, we will look at refill options for personal care products.
“To protect the health of humans and fellow creatures who share our planet, the urgent priority must be to eliminate single-use consumer plastic, and to invest in reusable, refillable and package-free approaches.”5
The Refill Shoppe
This company sells refillable hair, body, and home products made with non-toxic, vegan, and biodegradable ingredients.7Â They have a storefront in California but offer online ordering as well. They are a Certified B Corporation, meaning they use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. Their products can be purchased and refilled in pouches that you return to the company with a prepaid envelope, and they sanitize and reuse the pouches rather than just recycling them. They even offer many customizable products with the same refill options. Next time I run out of conditioner or bubble bath, I plan to try them!
Plaine Products
This company was founded by two sisters who want to stop plastic pollution.8 Plaine Products sells shampoo, conditioner, lotion, hand wash, and body wash in aluminum containers. The first time you purchase, you receive a reusable pump. This is great, as you’re not getting a disposable new pump with every purchase. When you order a refill, you switch the pump to the new container. Rinse the empty bottle out and ship it back to Plaine Products at their cost. They will sanitize and reuse the bottles, creating a closed-loop system with minimal waste. Their products are vegan and cruelty-free, and they are also a Certified B Corporation. I plan to try their products in the near future! There’s an additional review under Additional Resources below.
Fillaree
I wrote about Fillaree in my article about refillable cleaners, but they also carry personal use products, so I’m mentioning them again here. They sell refillable liquid hand soap, shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. You can refill any of these at stores that carry their products, and the hand soap and body wash are available as mail subscriptions.9They plan to offer refills by mail on their other products soon as well. This is a growing company with an ideal business model. The customer buys the refill product, which provides 2-4 refills in the original container, and then ships the empty containers back to the company for refilling at the company’s cost. They sanitize and refill the containers and ship them again.
by Humankind
This company’s tagline is, “high-performing personal care products that are kinder to your body and our planet.” They’ve created refills that use little or no plastic and they do not ship water, reducing emissions. They sell shampoo and conditioner bars, mouthwash tabs, deodorants in refillable containers, and cotton swabs without a plastic container. This company uses vegan ingredients, its products are cruelty-free, it is a carbon-neutral company, and most refill packaging is home compostable. I’ve tried their conditioner bar and cotton swabs, and while a bit expensive, the products so far are high quality.10
“Great personal care products don’t have to come at Earth’s expense.” -by Humankind
Bite
“One billion toothpaste tubes are thrown out each year.”
Think about that for a second, one billion plastic tubes, tossed out annually! Most toothpaste tubes are not recyclable, either. The founder of Bite set out to solve this problem but was also concerned about the questionable ingredients found in common toothpaste and the fact that oral care products are tested on animals. She wanted to create a toothpaste that was healthy for our bodies, not tested on animals, and plastic-free. Bite toothpaste bits sell in refillable glass jars and have safer ingredients. The company offers a refill subscription plan, lists their ingredients on their website, and ships only in recyclable corrugated boxes and paper mailing envelopes. The refills come in 100% home compostable pouches.11 I’m very excited about this company, and I recently purchased Bite products which I’ll be reviewing in a future post. You can also read Beth Terry’s review of Bite, which I’ve linked under Additional Resources below.
The very week I wrote this, Bite released a plant-based dental floss in a refillable glass container, much like Dental Lace (see below). Refills ship in compostable pouches. Two weeks after that, Bite released a line of mouthwash tabs in reusable tins.
“Whether it’s mindlessly tossing out an empty toothpaste tube or glossing over the ingredients list, small daily actions can shape the future of our planet. By uncovering how we can be better to ourselves and to the earth, we are one step closer to a healthier and plastic-free world.”- Bite Toothpaste Bits
Dental Lace
Did you know that most dental floss is made of plastic, some of which contain dangerous PFCs (perfluorochemicals)? And sold in plastic containers? Well, there’s a better option that’s natural and compostable, and in refillable glass containers. Dental Lace was begun by a librarian, and we all know how awesome librarians are. The floss is made from silk and can be composted instead of put in the trash. The glass containers are decorative, refillable, and recyclable. The packaging is all home compostable.12Â I have personally used this product for about 3 years now, and I love that I can floss and not create a ton of non-recyclable waste while doing so. Below is a video review from zero-waste platform Trash is For Tossers:
Solutions
“If you want to eliminate waste in your life – and in the world – the answers will always come down to one simple thing: consume differently.” -Tom Szaky
I’ve included this quote in many of my packaging series articles, as it succinctly summarizes what we need to do going forward. Consume differently. We must look for more sustainable, longer-lasting products. We must look for less packaging in our consumables and seek refillable options. If we demand better from companies and vote with our spending, we can make great changes.
This is not a comprehensive list of all the companies that offer refillable products but rather a list of resources. I have listed companies that I have either personally tried or researched.
We have one more topic to explore in this series: food packaging. So look for my next and final article in my Packaging series soon! By subscribing, you will receive it directly in your inbox! Thank you for reading!
This post does not contain any affiliate links nor did I get paid to promote any of the products in this post.
Additional Resources:
Article, “Shampoo Bars Eliminate the Need for Plastic Packaging,” Because Turtles Eat Plastic Bags website, October 2, 2019.
Review, “Why I Love Plastic-Free Bite Toothpaste Bits,” My Plastic Free Life website, March 21, 2019.
Article, “My Top 5 Zero Waste Shower Essentials,” Going Zero Waste website, May 19, 2017.
