Ep. 53: What to Do With the Plastic You Already Have — Practical Ways To Go (Almost) Plastic-Free

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (00:00.918)
If you’re looking to reduce plastic, you might be wondering what to do with all of the plastic you already have. Well, you might be surprised by my answer. Welcome to Sustainable in the Suburbs, a podcast for the eco-curious who want to live a greener life and are looking for a place to start. I’m your host, Sarah Robertson Barnes, a soccer mom with a station wagon and a passion for sustainable living. Each week, I’ll bring you practical tips and honest conversations to help you waste less.

Save money and make small doable shifts that actually fit your real life. Because sustainable living doesn’t have to be perfect to matter, and you don’t have to do it all to make a difference. Hello and welcome back to Sustainable in the Suburbs, the podcast where we start where we are, use what we have, and live a little greener, one small shift at a time. My name is Sarah, and I’m happy to be spending a little time with you today. If this is your first time here, welcome.

This podcast is bi-weekly with new episodes out every other Tuesday. So please make sure that you’re following the show wherever you’re listening today so that you don’t miss an episode. And if you’d like to support the show, I would be so grateful if you left a rating or a review wherever you’re listening today, as that really helps other folks find us. Or you can click support the show in the show notes. And for all of the show notes, blog posts, my newsletter, and everything else.

Head on over to sustainable in the suburbs.com. So let’s talk about plastic. Plastic is one of those things that can feel almost ambient until you start paying attention. And then suddenly you notice it everywhere. Not just the obvious stuff, but all the little things too. The packaging around the thing that you just bought and instantly forgot about, the tubes of personal care products, the bag inside the box, the wrapper around the snack.

The plastic film you peeled off and immediately threw away. It all adds up really quietly until one day you really see it. And this time of year, a lot of people are thinking more about single-use plastic because it is Plastic Free July. And Plastic Free July is a global initiative from the Plastic Free Foundation. And if you want to learn more or take their official pledge to reduce single-use plastic, I will link to their website for you in the show notes. But today I want to have a slightly different conversation about plastic.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (02:21.476)
Because we are using a truly innovative material in incredibly disposable ways. Plastic itself is not necessarily the enemy. It can be an incredible material for medical equipment and mobility aids, safety gear and our computers and phones, all kinds of technology that we rely on every day. The problem is that we are using something that will last for centuries or longer to hold a snack for five minutes or wrap up food for a few days.

carry our takeout or package something that we immediately throw away. Plastic can be useful, but single-use plastic is often the problem. We are drowning in it. And most of it cannot be recycled in any meaningful way. Part of the problem is that new plastic is made from fossil fuels and it is still cheaper to make more of it than it is to collect, sort, clean, and recycle the plastic that already exists. And even when that plastic is recycled,

It usually downgrades in quality, which means that it’s often downcycled into something less useful rather than turned back into the same kind of product again and again. And that is really frustrating because there’s so much potential for innovation in this space. There are people working on better materials, better reuse systems, better refill models, better packaging design, and better ways to keep plastic circulating. But it’s hard for those solutions to compete.

When the market is constantly flooded with cheap new plastic, which is exactly why I don’t think the answer is to panic and purge our homes or buy a whole new set of better, more eco-friendly things. So instead, let’s return to our starting point. Use what you already have, keep materials in circulation, and let our awareness turn into habits and pressure on systems, but not panic.

This isn’t going to be an episode about sustainable swaps though. If you’re looking for that, episode eight is all about the best swaps for your kitchen. And episode 47 is all about a plastic-free bathroom. I also have blog posts on refill shopping and zero waste school lunches and plastic free swaps, and I’ll link all of those in the show notes for you. But today I want to zoom out. Today is about rethinking our relationship with plastic, the plastic that we bring home and the stuff we already own.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (04:44.187)
The reusables we actually use, the disposable things we can stretch further, and the systems that make plastic feel unavoidable.

Before we talk about reducing the amount of plastic coming into our homes, we need to talk about the plastic that is already there. Reducing plastic waste does not mean going through your house and throwing away every plastic thing you own. Please do not do that. That would not be very sustainable. If you already have plastic containers and bags and toys and Tupperware, and I’m sure you do, use them. Use them until they are no longer usable.

Because the most sustainable option is the one already sitting in your cupboard. It’s a natural impulse to want to buy something to solve a problem because that’s the culture we live in. But a huge part of sustainable living is the mindset shift away from that impulse and learning to pause before we buy something new. Asking ourselves, do I already have something that will work for this? And that question is bigger than plastic. It’s part of shifting away from consumerism as a whole.

That thing you already own might not be the most aesthetic, and your things might not match, and your pantry might not be, you know, quote unquote Pinterest worthy, but it works. And the more often you ask that question, the more resourceful you become. You start seeing possibilities instead of just seeing clutter or waste. Do you actually need all glass containers with bamboo lids, or is the mismatched Tupperware you already have just fine after all?

That plastic now becomes something useful instead of something that’s ultimately disposable. You start to see what you already have in a new light, not just as stuff. If you’re no longer comfortable using older plastic containers for food, that’s cool. That doesn’t mean they need to go straight into the garbage. Just use them somewhere else. Use them for craft supplies or hardware, batteries, office supplies, your garden labels or seed packets, the kids’ collections of

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (06:49.605)
Little toys, Lego project boxes. You can use them under your bathroom sink for first aid supplies and keep all your miscellaneous cords in them or for saving seeds. I really like to use those little takeout sauce containers. They’re perfect for saving your seeds. The point is to keep the material in use and out of the landfill for as long as you can. The goal is not to get rid of plastic in your life entirely. That’s probably not possible.

The goal is to stop treating plastic like it’s disposable when it was in fact designed to last.

So I learned this the hard way during my first real attempt at reducing plastic. So back in 2016, 2017, I found the zero waste hashtag on Instagram. And approximately 14 minutes later, I was ready to go all in and change my life. I took it very literally. We are going zero waste. We are going plastic free. We are choosing to refuse everything.

And predictably that did not go well. And I gave myself zero grace about zero waste. Once I started seeing single-use plastic, I saw it everywhere. But in hindsight, I wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees. I was annoyed by produce stickers and that plastic film that’s under the lid of your yogurt container and plastic straws. I started wondering if I could get my medication plastic free, which is not good.

I even refused to buy my kids granola bars, which somehow became the headline for an article I was interviewed for, which is iconic, but maybe for the wrong reasons. The thing that really sent me over the edge was a tiny plastic bag at the movie theater. We’d gone to see a 3D movie, and the 3D glasses came in this little plastic sleeve. Never mind that the glasses themselves were being sanitized and reused, which is actually good. I could not get past the bag.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (08:52.53)
And I spiraled and I cried over this tiny little piece of plastic because in that moment I saw it as a personal failure. So I had gone to the bad place. And looking back, the issue is not that I cared too much. I did care. I still care. The issue is that I had nowhere useful to put that level of awareness yet. I was treating every unavoidable piece of plastic like proof that I was failing.

Instead of seeing it as proof that we live inside systems that make disposable plastic impossible to avoid. And that’s an important distinction. Awareness matters. I do believe that, but awareness needs somewhere useful to go. So it shouldn’t just turn into panic or turn into guilt or despair. And it shouldn’t only turn into trying to do everything perfectly as an individual.

Or refusing to buy your children granola bars because you’re having an existential crisis in the grocery store. Plastic is not a personal failure. It is a systems problem that shows up in our homes.

Once you start paying attention to single-use plastic, it is very easy to jump straight into buying all the reusable versions of things. So tote bags and cloth produce bags and our reusable water bottles and straws, the bamboo cutlery wraps, beeswax wraps, all the sustainable living products that the internet has to offer. And some of those things are great. I have lots of them. I use lots of them. I have a whole blog post about my recommended plastic free swaps.

And kitchen swaps and zero waste school lunches, and I mentioned all that already. So I’ll link them in the show notes. If you really want to dig into the more practical what to use instead side of this, but before you buy another reusable, I want you to think about your actual life because the best swap is the one that you will actually use. My stainless steel water bottle is my ride or die reusable. I’ve had it for

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (10:54.096)
Easily 20 years, it looks like it has been run over by a bus and shot out of a cannon at this point. And you can pry that thing out of my cold dead hands and then give it to someone else to reuse. That is a good swap for me because I use it constantly. But I do not need a travel mug. I can’t drink coffee after 8 a.m. So I almost never get coffee when I’m out, and therefore carrying a travel mug around is not part of my life. It doesn’t matter how cute.

Or practical or sustainable a travel mug might be in theory if it’s just going to sit in the cupboard. A reusable only works if you actually use it. Otherwise, it’s just another thing you bought because you were trying to be more sustainable. And I say that with love because I have absolutely done that, especially in my early zero waste days. And now I have a jar on my kitchen shelf that is full of straws and bamboo cutlery that only serve as decor.

But the real shift is not in finding the perfect reusable. The real shift is in noticing your own habits. So think about reusables the way you think about getting dressed for the day. What am I doing today? Where am I going? Am I going grocery shopping? Okay, I need the tote bags and the cloth produce bags. Probably gonna want to bring my bottle so I don’t have to buy something. Do I eat out a lot? So then maybe a cutlery set wrapped in a cloth napkin makes sense. Am I actually gonna need a straw? Maybe I don’t need one after all.

Choose the reusables that fit your actual life. This is a very different approach than buying every reusable item and hoping it changes your habits. So before you buy anything new, you know what I’m to say. Look around your house first. You probably already have something that works: a jar, a lunch container, some cloth bags, some old Tupperware, a takeout container that works just as well for bringing your lunch to work as a stainless steel one might.

Build habits around the things you will really use.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (12:54.898)
So now let’s talk about the plastic we typically only use for a few minutes. The dreaded single-use plastic, the takeout container, bread bags, the berry clamshells, or those little takeout sauce containers, bubble mailers, or my personal pet peeve, the plastic cutlery that came with your food, even though you did not ask for it, and in fact asked for it not to be included. Now, all of those things are usually treated as disposable and they are designed that way.

They come into the house as packaging or convenience items, and so our brains file them under garbage almost immediately. They are single use, after all, right? Well, as I always say, it’s only single use if you use it once. Of course, you are not going to find a new use for every single piece of plastic that comes into your house. That’s not the point. The point is to pause for a second before something hits the trash can and ask yourself, can this do one more thing? Can I keep this in use?

And out of the landfill just a little bit longer. So can the takeout container hold leftovers or freezer scraps or craft supplies? Again, the little sauce containers are perfect for seeds, or maybe beads or paint, or those tiny bits and bobs in the junk drawer. Plastic cutlery can double as garden markers. That berry clamshell can become a seed starting container or a drawer organizer.

That bread bag could be used one more time as a freezer bag before it gets tossed. So sometimes the answer will be no, and that’s fine. We can’t save everything. But sometimes the answer will be yes. So at my grocery store, the produce in the reduced section is almost always packaged in one of those like paper baskets and then wrapped in plastic wrap, which is so annoying that they do that, but we’ll come back to that in a minute. So for me,

Preventing the food waste has a bigger impact than refusing the plastic, because that produce and the plastic is destined for landfill regardless if no one buys it. So instead, I use the food and then I try to give the plastic wrap one more job before I throw it away. So maybe it covers a bowl of pizza dough while it rises, or it wraps up some cheese. It’s still gonna end up in the garbage, but I got one more use out of it first. So that’s the shift. It’s not too

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (15:16.802)
Hoard garbage. The point is to stop moving things from useful to useless quite so quickly. When we start to value even those materials as reusable rather than disposable, it allows us to be really creative and resourceful. And we start seeing possibilities in other things that we already have too. We start asking, can this do one more thing? And that’s an important habit to build because it changes how we see waste as a whole.

It reminds us that these materials took resources to make. They were produced and shipped and packaged and bought and used and then somehow became our responsibility to deal with. So if we can keep them in use a little bit longer before they leave our homes, that is really worth doing.

Of course, household habits matter, but they are not the whole story. Yes, use what you have. Refuse and reuse whatever you can. Bring your own containers and carry the water bottle and give that plastic wrap one more job before it hits the garbage. And also, ask why the plastic was there in the first place. This is the piece that I was really missing when I first started trying to seriously reduce our household waste. I was so focused on

refusing things and avoiding things and figuring out how to work around the plastic in my own life that I was not really looking upstream. I was treating every piece of plastic like it was something that I had to personally solve instead of something that I should be questioning. So going back to my reduced produce example, yes, I will still buy the marked down produce wrapped in plastic if I know I can use it, because preventing food waste matters.

And yes, I will try to reuse that plastic wrap one more time before I throw it away, but I can also and have talk to the produce manager about it. I can call or email the company. I can say, I really appreciate having a reduced produce section and I use it and I love it, but I would love to see a lower waste way of packaging those items. So it’s the same thing at a cafe or a bakery. You can ask if they’ll put something in your own container.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (17:29.65)
Or if they have for here mugs and plates instead of disposables. And I don’t just mean like the cute little independent places where it feels like they’ll probably say yes. Ask at the big chains too. Like Tim Hortons has cups and plates, if that’s where you’re going. And like maybe they’ll say no. Maybe it feels a little bit awkward to ask, but those questions are still information moving through the system. And the more people that want reusable infrastructure, the more a company is likely to say yes.

And that sort of thing is why we now have the reusable container program nationwide at Bulk Barn here in Canada, for example. Because businesses are not going to know that people care about this if nobody ever says anything. This is where our individual habits can really turn into collective action. You ask the question or show that yes, you can put it in your own container and someone sees it and hears it, and maybe they never thought about that before.

So this actually happens to me fairly regularly when I’m refilling at Bulk Barn, and I have zero chill about it when I’m explaining that yes, you can bring your own jars, and then maybe they do it next time. Then the manager hears the same question from five different people in one month, and someone at head office starts seeing the same feedback come through again and again. Just remember that systems are made of people and people can be influenced. Individual action matters because awareness changes habits.

And habits spark conversations and conversations shift norms and public pressure works and can push companies and governments to change. This is why your voice matters just as much as your wallet. Money talks, but your voice can be louder. So ask the questions and send the email and talk to the store, mention the packaging, support your municipal waste policies and demand improvement. Pay attention to efforts to put extended producer responsibility into policy.

Notice where plastic feels unavoidable and then refuse to accept that it has to stay that way. Choose to refuse the waste and refuse to accept the systems that make it seem unavoidable.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (19:38.378)
So for this week’s one small shift, before you throw away a piece of plastic, ask whether it can do one more job. That’s it. Just one more use, because it’s only single use if you use it once. So as we wrap up, I just again want to revisit the bigger picture here. This episode looked at the plastic that moves through our homes. And once you start paying attention to that, it becomes a lot harder not to think about where it goes next, into the landfill, but also into our streets.

And parks and schoolyards and trails and waterways, the shared spaces that we all move through. So in a future episode, we’ll take this conversation outside the home and talk about litter and behavior change and community spaces and what it takes to keep waste from ending up in the places that we all share. Because plastic is not the whole problem. Waste is the problem. Disposability is the problem. And the work starts with using what we already have, refusing what we can.

and speaking up about the systems that keep it in place. So that’s all for today, my friends. Thank you for listening. Until next time, start where you are, use what you have and live a little greener.

Thanks for tuning in to Sustainable in the Suburbs. Every small step adds up, and I’m so glad we’re doing this together. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. You can find me at sustainableintheburbs.com or at Sarah Robertson Barnes on all the things. Until next time, start where you are, use what you have, and live a little greener. This podcast is produced, mixed, and edited by Cardinal Studio.

For more information about how to start your own podcast, please visit http://www.cardinalstudio.co or email Mike at mike at cardinalstudio.co. You can also find the details in the show notes.