Simple Plastic-Free Swaps You Can Do Now

Oh my gosh! The past week has been crazy around here. And not just because the children may or may not be recovering from their Halloween-induced sugar highs. No, mainly because I have been working my butt off behind the scenes putting some systems in place to get Everything’s Famtastic running better AND of course, trying to come up with some cool stuff for you. (Keep an eye on this site in the coming weeks or even better, you can subscribe to my newsletter to make sure you don’t miss a thing! **wink wink**)

So, it’s been a few weeks now since I interviewed my friend Birgitta about her (and her family’s) plastic-free lifestyle. You can read her story here . Personally, I’m no eco-warrior. But I’m also no climate change-denier. This planet we call home has a population focused on consuming, resulting some serious problems for which we all need to take responsibility.

In our family, we are open and honest about being NOT plastic-free… Yet. Like, I can clearly confess that the Halloween booty collected last week by the kids was 100% NOT environmentally friendly. What will all those wrappers and miniature sizes of everything. They had tons of fun collecting (and slowly eating) it all, no doubt. But the amount of plastic was, well, shameful.

Hearing Birgitta talk so passionately about why she refuses to have plastic in her house and how she makes it possible in a family of 4 really spurred me on to Do.Something.

I thought it might be helpful to you (and me!) to revisit the tips she shared with us and to check out the small steps that ANYONE can implement quickly and easily to reduce their plastic waste. Come on, let’s take a look…

3 Easy Changes to Reduce Plastic Waste

In my interview with Birgitta she made 3 suggestions for reducing plastic in your household (and therefore landfill 😉) that require little to no effort:

1. Bring your own cloth shopping bags
2. Choose unpackaged products where possible
3. Choose paper over plastic packaging

If I were to review where our family is at for these 3 plastic-free ideas, I would say…

1. We ALWAYS take our own cloth shopping bags for packing our groceries. No plastic grocery bags for us.
2. Mixed success. Sometimes we take the unpackaged apples or tomatoes. And sometimes we don’t. There is a LOTS of room for improvement here 😉
3. When we see a product in paper packaging we grab that one instead of the one in plastic. Things like rice are an easy example and almost always we can find these 2 alternatives on our supermarket shelf. For our family, we need to get more consistent with this suggestion.

4 More Easy Plastic-Free Swaps

So, is that all? NO!!! Zero-waste and 100% plastic-free we are not, but there are a number of additional things our family has agreed to try to reduce the plastic packaging and waste in our 5-person household.

If you are looking for even more ideas to decrease plastic waste in your own household beyond the 3 above, then let yourself be inspired here. Seriously, if our family can make these small but consistent changes for the better, I know you can too!

Plastic vs Glass

There are so many products to buy in the supermarket where you can make the choice between buying the one in plastic or the one in glass. In a plastic-free household, obviously glass is the way to go. For example, we used to buy individual portion-sized [plastic] yogurt tubs. Not any more! Big multi-serve glass jars for us now 😊.

Same deal with water bottles. Some people would say that we should skip buying bottled water all together and they could be right. To be fair, we do drink a lot of tap water in this household too. But seeing as how we also drink bottled water, we are choosing the lesser of 2 evils and buying the glass bottles rather than the plastic ones. While some people may be concerned about the price of all these alternatives to plastic packaging, I can say we haven’t really noticed any difference in this category.

Side note: I know not all countries around the world offer the intricate recycling system set up by the ultra-organised, environmentally-aware German state, but those glass yogurt jars and water bottles all have a deposit included in the price, thus encouraging consumers to return them to the store afterwards for a refund and recycling. *** Fun Fact*** And did you know, many bottles are actually then returned to the factory, cleaned and reused rather than melted down again?

Store-bought Deo vs DIY Deoderant

Were you aware that you can actually make your own deodorant? Sounds crazy, right?!? Actually, it’s not crazy. And it’s also really easy. All it takes is 3 regular ingredients found in your kitchen and voila! Deo made with natural products that were not packaged in plastic and a great deodorant for you containing no micro-plastics or weird chemicals with 14-syllable-long unpronounceable names. Win!

Did you grab that DIY Deo Recipe I talked about in that plastic-free post with Birgitta? No? It’s still available here. And it’s free 😉.

You can add a few drops of your favourite essential oil if you’re after a particular scent, or just leave it as is. I added a lovely essential oils blend called Happy Mood which gives me a little happy kick at the start of the day!

Regular Toothpaste vs Toothpaste Tabs

Who knew that toothpaste in tablet form was even “a thing”?!? I certainly didn’t. (FYI, there’s also toothpaste powder 😉.) But yes, I can confirm that such a product exists! We recently bought some toothpaste tablets to give them a test run. The benefits include both clean teeth and no plastic packaging. *big toothy smile*

As I just discovered, there are actually a few brands on the market these days (see here for a review I came across) and apparently our family went straight for the Lamborghini of toothpaste tablets, LOL!

The verdict? I think they are great and I have no problems using the tablets. Hubby is not so impressed and thinks he is probably just accustomed to having a foamy mouth when brushing teeth, which doesn’t happen with the tablets. The kids love them (probably mostly for novelty value) and expect that we will continue buying them when this packet runs out.

The downside is that they are more expensive than regular toothpaste. But I reckon they’re worth trying out! As long as they keep my teeth clean and shiny, I am one happy customer avoiding the old plastic toothpaste tube 😊.

Plastic Produce Bags vs DIY Reusable Mesh Bags

You know those nasty, flimsy plastic bags that are free for the taking in the fresh produce section at your local supermarket? No more of those for this family here!

I have just started sewing some small mesh bags that we will be using to carry our unpackaged bananas, apples, paprikas (peppers, capsicums, call ‘em what you will 😉) and more.

The bags are easy to sew (seriously, anyone can do it!) and lightweight (like 5 grams vs a regular plastic bag which weighs 2 grams), can be reused time and time again and can be washed if they get grubby. Not a bad idea, eh? You don’t have to sew them though; some supermarkets sell them ready-made and ready to go.

The only trick to having your own BYO [Bring Your Own] bags is remembering to bring them to the store. But if you’re bringing your own cloth bags already for packing your groceries, it should be fairly to remember to throw these ones in too.

Here’s a head’s up: Take a look at the simple instructions so you too can sew your own reusable mesh bags.

The Plastic-Free Learning Curve

And there are so many more things that we are just starting to test out: rye flour instead of shampoo, apple cider vinegar instead of hair conditioner, homemade clothes detergent… They possibly all sound a little bit hippy dippy, but so what?!? If there is a more natural, environmentally-friendly, healthier, plastic-free product you can use, I say “Why not?!?”.

My kids think all of these changes are brilliant and have definitely become aware of what plastic packaging is around, both at home and in the supermarket. They are regularly pointing out plastic when they see it, such as “Mama, those glass water bottle are good, but they still have plastic lids!”. Perhaps a tad overly vigilant, but aware nonetheless.

We’re a looooong way from claiming to have a plastic-free household. (Clearly!!) But we have started making some changes in the way we choose the products we consume and are making our own small efforts to reducing a world-wide problem. Being able to instil this attention and consciousness in the kids at a relatively young age will hopefully help their own decision-making in a more environmentally-aware way as they grow older. After all, they are the future generation who will be managing this planet. 😉

See? Reducing the amount of plastic packaging you let into your family home by swapping for more eco alternatives is actually not that intimidating. And it’s certainly doable!

What does plastic-free mean to you? Have you made any changes at home? What’s the first thing you did? What has been the easiest? Share your experiences with us below!