MOGO Tip: Ditch Disposables

Looking for ways to make a bigger positive impact in the new year? Make an effort to ditch those ubiquitous disposables. They're everywhere in our lives, and we don't even think about them; they're so common place that they're practically invisible, even to those of us striving to be "green." Paper napkins and towels. Tissues for our noses. Plastic straws. The little packets of stuff the fast food workers toss into our to-go bag with our order. The packaging our food and household "necessities" come home in. The filters for our coffee. The liners for our muffins and cupcakes. We could make a list to infinity.

As Annie Leonard says in the Consumption portion of The Story of Stuff, "99% of the stuff we harvest, mine, process, transport -- 99% of the stuff we run through this system is trashed within 6 months." That's a lot of waste flowing through our lives and into landfills.

One of my goals for this year is to significantly decrease what I throw away, as well as to reduce my co-dependent relationship with single-use stuff. I'll be buying glass straws, acquiring reusable bags to carry my produce home from the store, getting more items in bulk and storing them in glass instead of plastic, looking for products with little or no packaging (and looking for ways to borrow, make or make do instead of buying). I'll be striving to pay attention each day to how often disposables sneak their way into my life and working to think creatively about what I can use instead. And, instead of being all grumpy and feeling overwhelmed about it, I'm excited. To me, it feels like solving a mystery, which is usually fun.

If you need a few resources to start you on your own path to ditching disposables, check out sites such as Fake Plastic Fish, 365 Days of Trash, and No Impact Man.

If you have great ideas for reducing your use of disposables and your generation of waste, we'd love you to share them here.

~ Marsha

Image courtesy of Muffet via Creative Commons.

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