Waste Not
Earlier in the year, a lot of my sorority sisters and friends from college were sharing videos on social media of people who have managed to live an almost completely zero waste life. Watching these videos, I realized that I although I always say that I want to be environmentally conscious, I produce an awful lot of unnecessary garbage waste every day. I decided that I wanted to change that, but I acknowledged the fact that I was going to need to make small changes at first if I was ever going to keep up with them.
The first thing I did was buy my own travel mug for the copious amounts of coffee I drink a day. I was using it regularly for a while, and then one day just forgot. One day turned into two days, turned into months. Last week, I was joking with a coworker and they reminded me about my goal and helped me decide to try and get back on track with using my travel mug again.
The other small change I found that I could make was shopping with reusable bags. I bought my first one at Target and it's my new best friend. I keep it in my car and use it whenever I go grocery shopping. I don't have to deal with a bunch of little plastic bags, and I get to save some fish in the process. This past weekend, I was introduced to my newest reusable bag, a huge bag from Primark that only cost me $2, and I am so excited to start using it too.
Now that I'm trying to get back on track with my zero coffee cup, zero little plastic bag lifestyle, I'm finding that some of my favorite places to shop actually offer perks for using reusable products. My top two are Target and Starbucks, because I shop in those if not every day, at least every week.
Target will give you at least a $0.05 discount for using your own bag (possibly more with more bags, but I haven't trued it out yet since the last few times I went I only needed the one bag. Shocking, but it's a really decent sized bag.)
Starbucks will give you a $0.10 discount for using your own mug.
Although both of these perks sound really tiny, they add up pretty quickly if you shop in the stores frequently like I do. For example, for a while I was getting Starbucks every single day. If I used my own mug all those visits, I would have saved $36.50 that year. That would be able to let me get a nice little treat myself gift at the end of the year.
There are still a lot of ways I know I want to improve on my lower waste lifestyle, but my theory is that if every single person finds a way to change their waste levels (without having to change their entire lifestyle) that's still so much less plastic finding its way into the ocean where its almost impossible to clean it all up. No matter how much of a change you can make, every single thing you manage not to waste is one less thing a fish might accidentally eat.
The first thing I did was buy my own travel mug for the copious amounts of coffee I drink a day. I was using it regularly for a while, and then one day just forgot. One day turned into two days, turned into months. Last week, I was joking with a coworker and they reminded me about my goal and helped me decide to try and get back on track with using my travel mug again.
The other small change I found that I could make was shopping with reusable bags. I bought my first one at Target and it's my new best friend. I keep it in my car and use it whenever I go grocery shopping. I don't have to deal with a bunch of little plastic bags, and I get to save some fish in the process. This past weekend, I was introduced to my newest reusable bag, a huge bag from Primark that only cost me $2, and I am so excited to start using it too.
Now that I'm trying to get back on track with my zero coffee cup, zero little plastic bag lifestyle, I'm finding that some of my favorite places to shop actually offer perks for using reusable products. My top two are Target and Starbucks, because I shop in those if not every day, at least every week.
Target will give you at least a $0.05 discount for using your own bag (possibly more with more bags, but I haven't trued it out yet since the last few times I went I only needed the one bag. Shocking, but it's a really decent sized bag.)
Starbucks will give you a $0.10 discount for using your own mug.
Although both of these perks sound really tiny, they add up pretty quickly if you shop in the stores frequently like I do. For example, for a while I was getting Starbucks every single day. If I used my own mug all those visits, I would have saved $36.50 that year. That would be able to let me get a nice little treat myself gift at the end of the year.
There are still a lot of ways I know I want to improve on my lower waste lifestyle, but my theory is that if every single person finds a way to change their waste levels (without having to change their entire lifestyle) that's still so much less plastic finding its way into the ocean where its almost impossible to clean it all up. No matter how much of a change you can make, every single thing you manage not to waste is one less thing a fish might accidentally eat.
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