Series 1 – Simple Steps to Reduce Plastic Waste in Everyday Life

Though I am trying to reduce plastic in my life, I still can’t imagine my life completely plastic-free. So just think about the life of a normal person who is just going about daily life and making ends meet. On average, a normal human being uses at least 10-20 plastic objects daily. Simple objects like toothbrushes, and soap containers, bath products, food packaging keep adding up to the pile of plastic waste.

In this post, I will give you simple steps to Reduce Plastic Waste in your daily life. I will tell you easy-to-follow steps to minimize plastic waste in everyday life.

Who doesn’t want to live in a clean environment but this requires a lot of effort from all humans. A few centuries ago, before plastic, our earth was almost like this but it’s us humans who have made a mess, and it’s up to us to clean it as well.

Simple Steps To Reduce Plastic Waste At Home

We all want to live in a clean environment with easy or nothing to do in life, But in reality, it’s not possible. For every action, there is a reaction. If we need something, we need to put in the effort. We all want a clean environment, clear air, and clean water to live a healthy and happy life. If we need this, we have to put in the effort to reduce our plastic usage to a very low amount or none if possible. We are extremely lucky that in today’s environment, almost everything has an eco-friendly alternative. We just need to put in a little effort in looking a little deeper or looking for an alternate solution.

Just close your eyes and picture your daily life just for a day. How you started your day and how much plastic you have used in a single day. Most of this stuff we use is thinking that there is no alternative and we have no other solution other than to use it.

Let’s start with the first thing we use in the morning, our toothbrushes. Plastic toothbrushes were invented around a century ago and it takes 1000+ years for a plastic toothbrush to decompose. That means the first ever toothbrush still exists somewhere on the earth. Just think about the number of toothbrushes as human we all use. Just by replacing plastic toothbrushes with wooden toothbrushes, we can help save a tremendous amount of plastic in a single household.

Let’s move on to the second most important step in our daily life, Bath. We all take a bath at least once a day. I am not asking you to stop having baths, that will be very unhygienic, but reducing the amount of water you use in the shower will have a huge impact on environmental health.

Each time we have a shower, we use at least 2-3 products and most of these products come in plastic packaging. Move to eco-friendly options and you can drastically reduce your plastic waste.

You can check out my other posts to learn more about eco-friendly bath products.

Let’s move on to the third most important task of the day, breakfast. Have we ever noticed the amount of plastic we use just for the first meal of the day? Most of us have prepacked food or even if we are making it at home, we just take it out from the fridge and reheat it. It not only generates plastic waste but also is very harmful to our health too.

Instead, I have replaced almost all my prepacked cereal with fast and easy cooking food. It took some time for my kids and partner to get used to of not eating their favorite sausages, cereal, and mayonnaise sandwiches for breakfast but everyone feels happy after starting the day right.

I generally eat fruit or overnight oats soaked in milk, water, or yogurt based on my preference and availability. I generally buy my oats from a zero-waste store near my office. Fruits I generally buy from the farmer’s market as I get the fresh ingredients without any packaging over there. In our society, we have made a group of 10 women and generally, 2-3 of us go to the farmer’s market and do the shopping for all of us. In this way, one person needs to dedicate only 1 Saturday morning time a month and we get a fresh supply of fruits and vegetables without any packaging for the whole month.

I have yet to find a solution for milk and yogurt plastic containers or tetra packs but yet to find something doable and acceptable in our daily busy life.

Simple Steps to Reduce Plastic Waste: Daily life changes to reduce plastic use

Almost every single decision we make or every single product we buy or use, we just need to ask ourselves a few questions. These simple steps to reduce plastic waste will help you a lot in long term.

Simple Steps to Reduce Plastic Pollution- Steps to be Taken While Buying Anything

Before you make any purchase, just follow the below guidelines and you will reduce your impulse shopping by 50%.

• Do I need it or can I manage without it?
• If I must buy it, can I buy it after a few days? This will help in controlling impulse shopping.
• If you must buy it, hold on for the next 4-5 days and there is a 95% chance that you will not buy that item.

Note: The step mentioned above is certainly easier to recommend than to implement, especially when it comes to maintaining self-discipline during online shopping. It’s common for websites to display sales and offers that seem to be available for a limited time, often ranging from just one hour to a full day, which can create a sense of urgency to make a purchase.

However, it’s important to practice patience; these kinds of promotions are frequently available online, so there’s no need to rush into a decision. Take your time and consider your options carefully.

>>If you still need to buy it, look for an eco-friendly, sustainable alternative. You might spend a little more than the cheap plastic product you were planning to buy earlier, but please trust me, buying a better-quality product made from sustainable material will be worth the money.

You will be happy after buying an eco-friendly, sustainable product that you need and will use for a very long time. This is one of the most simple steps to reduce plastic waste as the less we buy, less plastic waste we produce.

Simple Steps to Reduce Plastic Pollution- Daily Transport Needs:

As far as I remember, my parents never dropped me to school in the car, I used to travel with other kids from my society by school bus or public transport. But from the time I started working, things changed and almost all of us would drive to work, and drop kids to school by car. Just imagine the number of cars traveling on the same route assuming that 60-70% of the kids of any particular society go to the same or nearby schools as per the allocated school zone.

Together with my society friends, we have made our carpool and almost 6-8 kids go to school in one single car and the same is the situation while picking them back. It saves a lot of fuel and transportation headaches for parents and pollution too. Now you must be thinking about where this suggestion fits in the topic of reducing plastic pollution.  But everything is related, the fewer cars we use, the lesser consumption of fuel, the tier and several other car components that are made of plastic or transported using plastic packaging will be reduced.

I have a rule with my colleagues that if the distance is less than 4 miles, we go on a walk. This helps keep us fit and reduces plastic usage at the same time. If we all want to take the car somewhere, we take 1 person’s car and he/she will drop the remaining out. This doesn’t impact much our schedule as this just adds another few minutes to our travel time but helps in keeping the fuel cost and pollution low.

These are just a few of the simple steps to reduce plastic pollution I have taken for the past few years and I am proud to say that my plastic pollution has drastically come down.

How to Live with Less Plastic

We all feel that replacing plastic in our life is a very big task but it’s not that big a deal. There are simple steps to reduce plastic waste which we all can take and reduce our plastic waste to a great extent.

You can start small, always remember, its consistency versus intensity.

I have seen several people start something with very high intensity and pour their heart into it but it just fizzles out in a while due to lack of consistency. You can be slow but just have to be consistent in doing that one item daily. There is always a chance to improve or add new changes to your schedule at a later time but just keep following the good practices you have started.

These are just some of the examples, I have picked randomly to start this series. In the next posts of this series, I will focus on quite a few sections of our lives where we think reducing plastic waste is next to impossible. I will give you actionable items that you can just do and reduce your carbon footprint.

I have been following a sustainable and eco-friendly lifestyle for the past few years and most of my friends know how passionate I am about it. Looking at my passion, they asked me to start writing this blog. Several of my friends said that when I write, it feels personal as I am only writing about what I am personally doing in my life not AI or ChatGPT stuff. They can relate to it as they have seen it by themselves my doing it for quite some time. They have been with me for past quite a few years and they have seen me transforming and changing.

My blogpost is dedicated to my friends who make sure that I write a few blogs a week just to start with. Pls feel free to share your ideas, lifestyle choices, and alternative eco-friendly products to replace plastic products that you have tried and liked. I would like to give them a try.

You can check out my other posts here.

FAQ

I always feel more comfortable reading any post if I get answers to the most frequently asked questions also on the same page. That’s the reason I try my best to answer as many questions as possible in my posts. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions I found on Google, pls read on.

• What is the simplest solution to plastic pollution?
  • Recycling is an important part of the solution to ocean plastic pollution. After doing everything we can to reduce our use of single-use plastic, we must prevent the rest from escaping into the environment. Capturing plastic for recycling is a key way to do that, but we don’t do it enough.
• What are 5 ways to reduce plastic waste (simple steps to reduce plastic waste)?
  • Tips for reducing your plastics consumption
    • Avoid single-use plastics such as drinking straws. …
    • If you go shopping, remember to take a cloth bag. …
    • Recycle chewing gum… it’s also make of plastic! …
    • Buy more bulk food and fewer packaged products. …
    • Replace plastic Tupperware for glass or steel containers.
• How can we reduce plastic use (simple steps to reduce plastic waste)?
  • Set your table with cloth napkins and reusable dishes, glasses, and silverware as often as possible. Think green before you shop. Bring your own reusable bag for carrying your purchases, and try to buy items with minimal packaging. If you bring your lunch, package it in reusable containers instead of disposable ones.
• How to manage plastic waste at home?
  • There are simple steps to reduce plastic waste which you can take easily at home.
    • Say NO to cellophane-wrapped products. …
    • Store your leftovers with silicone covers. …
    • Avoid tea bags and use a tea strainer. …
    • Change your plastic sponge for a natural sponge or luffa. …
    • Extend the life of your plastic.
• How can we stop plastic pollution for kids?
  • There are simple steps to reduce plastic waste for kids.
    • Fill up at a fountain. Drink out of a reusable water bottle instead of a plastic version. …
    • Make a better bag. Pack sandwiches and snacks in reusable containers or cloth sacks instead of plastic bags. …
    • Snack on fruit. …
    • Build a good goodie bag. …
    • Buy in bulk. …
    • Ditch microbeads. …
    • Never litter.
• What are 5 ways to recycle plastic?
  • Reuse Your Plastic Coffee Creamer Containers for Snack Storage: …
  • Make a Plastic Bottle Planter: …
  • Start a Herb Garden With Empty 2-Liter Bottles: …
  • Make a Beach Bucket From Laundry Detergent Containers: …
  • Reuse Soda Bottles by Creating a Vertical Garden:
• Reduce the Use of Single-Use Plastics:
  • Reducing our consumption of single-use plastics is one of the most practical steps we can take. We can significantly reduce plastic waste by substituting reusable alternatives for disposable plastic items such as bags, bottles, and cutlery.
  • Recycle effectively.
  • Reduce single-use plastic usage.
  • Be aware of products that include microplastics.
  • Volunteer to reduce plastic pollution.
  • Sign petitions and join campaigns that reduce ocean pollution.
  • Support charities that are challenging plastic pollution.
• Why do we need to reduce plastic waste?
  • Plastic pollution presents a serious threat to biodiversity, particularly for marine life as it can be easily ingested thereby resulting in the choking, injuring, poisoning, or starving of marine animals. Plastic waste can also block up natural waterways, polluting the water and disrupting the natural flow. There are simple steps to reduce plastic waste which we all must take.
• What is plastic waste management?
  • In short, plastic waste management is the efficient and precise conversion of plastic waste into innovative products that are better, environmentally friendly, and cost-effective. Advantages of implementing plastic waste management: Reduced environmental pollution. Reduced virgin plastic production.

Thank you so much for visiting my blogs and spending your precious time reading them. Please feel to share your comments.