How my five-year-old is leading plastic reduction at home
It’s nearly the end of plastic-free July so I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what we achieved in our household this month.
We didn’t set out to “go plastic free”, or even to participate in plastic-free July. But my five-year-old daughter is learning about waste and recycling at pre-school, and her focus and determination have infected us all!
Driven by her diligence around recycling and her commitment to reducing waste, I decided to look for ways to reduce our plastic use. I sat down with her to make a plan. Our approach had three steps:
- Identify high-impact areas in our household;
- Brainstorm ways we could make a change;
- Make a tactical plan to implement our top ideas.
High-impact
We decided that the area of greatest concern for us was single-use plastics. We then looked at how single-use plastic came into our house most frequently and two things stood out:
- Plastic bags from the farmers market
- Gallon milk bottles
Gallon milk bottles are obvious — we use a lot of milk, that’s why we get them. But the farmers market seems puzzling — don’t we use reusable shopping bags?? Of course we do. But there are all kinds of things that end up in a bag before you purchase them, and farmers markets are exempt from the single-use plastic bag ban. Anything small— beans, snap peas, Brussels sprouts, cherries — goes in a plastic bag. Some things are pre-packed in plastic bags, like salad greens, dried beans, and the lettuces at certain stalls. Our weekly trips to the farmers market were generating a lot of plastic. And while I wash and reuse some bags for storage, I’d rather not get them in the first place.
These seemed like two great places to start, so we moved on to brainstorming.
How to make a change
Over breakfast, my daughter and I talked about ways we might replace these single-use plastics. Here’s what we came up with:
- Replace our plastic gallons of milk with reusable half gallon glass bottles from Strauss dairy. Strauss not only re-uses the bottles, they’re also a carbon-neutral farm.
- Supplement cow milk with oat milk in Tetra packs: since Strauss milk is almost twice as expensive, we wanted to reduce our usage as a trade off. Oat milk also has a much smaller carbon footprint than dairy.
- Re-use plastic bags to buy our small things at the farmers market.
- Find ways to store vegetables that don’t use plastic bags.
- Take paper or compostable bags to the farmers market.
- Find other places to buy things that come pre-packed in plastic at the farmers market (eg, dried beans).
Once we had a set of ideas, we needed to figure out how to implement them.
Tactical implementation plan
We felt good about our ideas, but we needed a good plan to put them into action.
For the milk, it was pretty simple. All that we needed was a comms plan and buy-in from the family. Once we were all aligned on the goal and the proposed solution, we switched our buying patterns. We do have questions about Tetra packs; we’ve done some research and contacted the manufacturer, but we’re not entirely clear that this is the best type of packaging to choose.
The farmers market bags was a little harder. We decided to start with a way to measure our progress. First, we made a best-guess estimate of how many plastic bags per week came from the farmers market. We think it’s around five. That translates to around 260 plastic bags per year.
Next, we made a table with all the farmers market dates for the next couple months, so that we can track how we’re doing. It’s super simple. The columns are: date, number of bags used, and running total. Now we can track our usage and see how we’re doing. If we’re not seeing a reduction in our bag use, we’ll be able to dig into why that is.
I’ve also started trying out alternative storage methods, which has been great. Wrapping my leafy things (herbs, lettuce) in a damp tea towel has kept them fresher than plastic, and means I have no incentive for grabbing a sturdy plastic bag of beans.
Results
So, how are we doing?
Milk: Our fridge has no big plastic milk bottle, and we’re actively choosing oat milk for things where it’s an acceptable substitute for us (not everyone will drink the oat milk, and that’s ok).
Farmers market: Yesterday was the first time I’d been to the farmers market since we made the plan. I noticed the difference immediately. Because I knew I had to record the bags I used, I was incredibly aware of it while I was shopping. And I had forgotten my paper/compostable/reused bags. I felt like a failure right out of the gate. But then it turned into a game. Could I do it? Could I somehow come back with no new plastic bags? I made a deal with myself: I’d use one plastic bag for the dry-farmed tomatoes, but nothing else. One bag would be a significant improvement on five. As it turned out, the fine folks at Two Dog Farm (best tomatoes ever, seriously) won’t have their star item until next week. I came home triumphant. My daughter and I filled in the table together. Our running total: 0 plastic bags.
Resources
A few things that we used to help decide what would be impactful.
Sierra Club: Stop Obsessing About Recycling
Tetrapak recycling information
Science vs on plastics in the ocean and non-dairy milk
Plastic bag ban (prop 67) information
Science Vs. on Soy, Almond and Oat Milks and Plastic in the ocean
