Week one: Refuse

The first step on your Zero Waste journey is to refuse. Now this may seem silly but think about the things you do not need that you have laying around your house or that you pick up on a daily basis.

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One of the most common things is mail, not just the kind you get physically but also in your email. The world is full of “Promotion this and sign up for that.” Most of the things you get in the mail are just promotions that you will never use, most of them will just throw in the trash immediately. Many times if you call or go onto the website of the people sending you the mail you can unsubscribe. There is also something called the DMA, or the Data and Marketing Association. If you go Here you can put yourself on a “Do not mail list” the same thing goes for email. If I ever find an email I do not want in my inbox I take the few seconds to unsubscribe, normally it doesn't take the first time but after about a week they usually stop.

The most commonly known one is plastic shopping bags, but have you thought about produce bags and single use plastics? Even before I started on this Zero Waste Journey I began using reusable bags, they are cheap in most places but do not let the price fool you. You want them to be well constructed as a bag that rips after the first few uses is about as good as the ones you get from the regular stores. The best ones to get are usually made of cloth. Or just make your own if you are into yarn crafts, if not there are many people who will make them for you, myself included. Along with final shopping bags you should look into produce bags, I found some on amazon that are made of netting for produce and muslin ones for bulk items such as flour, nuts, and chips. The amount of items you can find in bulk has exponentially grown in the last few years. Some of the things I buy in bulk are nuts, flour, seeds, rice, oats, soap, shampoo, conditioner, oil, and herbs. Right now with the pandemic going on it is more difficult since many bulk shops have closed the bulk sections. There are still some online sellers that will do reduced waste shipping.

Another thing to reduce on is the amount of trash from online resellers. Am easy one to do is amazon. Go to your amazon account, go to help/customer service, click contact us, use their chat option. Once chatting request to make all future orders plastic free with minimal packaging and when absolutely necessary use only biodegradable packaging like paper. All this information will be saved to your account for all future orders. Many places will do this if you just take the time to make a note to them.

The easiest thing to refuse is promotional items, pens, post it notes, brochures, water bottles, business cards, etc. You will more than likely never use these items. You will hold on to them for a small amount of time before you finally either throw them away or donate them to a multi-million dollar “Donation center” who will most likely either throw it away immediately or put on their shelves and when it doesn't sell in 6 months they throw it away anyway. 

 

Actually I lied, there is one easier thing to refuse. Plastic utensils and straws. They are something that was made for convenience not for practicality. If you feel you must have a straw there are reusable options out there, steel, silicone, even compostable cardboard. As far as utensils go I was gifted a set of Bamboo, or one step better, pick up one of each from your set at home, wrap it in a cloth napkin or even a handkerchief.

Refusing is one of the biggest steps you can take to start your journey. The more you refuse the easier it will be in the future, including the next steps. Next week we will talk about reducing what you already have.