Top 5 Tips on How to Use Less Plastic

Climate change and conversations about sustainable living has become more and more prevalent in recent years. With Australia’s major supermarkets taking a stance and banning plastic bags, it appears that as a country, we are slowly trying to take steps towards being plastic-free. However, minding your environmental footprint and being eco-conscious isn’t easy in our consumerist world. So we’ve put together a collection of recycling and lifestyle tips from our authors to help you out on your sustainability journey for this #PlasticFreeJuly.

Tip 1: Try to repair or repurpose items

Repairing items when they break, rather than simply chucking them out in favour of new ones (which is why choosing well-made and easy-to-repair products is important), or repurposing them so that they can continue to be useful. – Less Stuff, Lindsay Miles

Old t-shirts can be used as rags, small holes can be sown up inconspicuously, and shoes can be re-soled. You've got this.

Tip 2: Recycle your soft plastics

Soft and noisy plastics (like plastic bags and food packaging) can often be recycled in supermarkets and some-times big box retailers or department stores. – Less Stuff, Lindsay Miles

If you found some soft plastics to be unavoidable this #PlasticFreeJuly, that's okay, you can still recycle them. Be ready to make some mistakes on your sustainability journey and just keep going.

Tip 3: Invest in reusable bags

Invest in reusable produce bags, made from old sheets, sold in health-food stores or found on Etsy. – Waste Not Everyday, Erin Rhoads

This might feel like an obvious tip and a given at this point, but it’s one of our favourites; reusable bags made from repurposed fabrics is a plastic-free win-win!

Tip 4: Buy your fruit and vegetables loose

Most major supermarkets has a loose fruits and vegetables section.

[You can also] support local growers at a farmers’ market where you’ll typically find fruit, vegetables and bread without any plastic packaging. Fewer emissions are produced in transporting the food, and you’ll get to know the families who grow it. If plastic-free produce is hard for you to find, join the #plasticfreeproduce campaign with activist Anita Horan, who offers helpful materials on anitahoran.com. – Waste Not Everyday, Erin Rhoads

Tip 5: Try making your own milk substitutes

Joke all you want about 'mylks', but if you want to live more sustainably they're the option to go for.

Dairy can be harder to find without plastic packaging, so instead, you can learn to make tasty substitutes with ingredients that you can buy unpackaged from bulk stores or in cardboard from supermarkets. – Waste Not, Erin Rhoads

All tips edited and extracted from: 

Less Stuff by Lindsay Miles
Available at your local bookstore and online
Click here to buy online

Waste Not Everyday by Erin Rhoads
Available at your local bookstore and online
Click here to buy online

Waste Not by Erin Rhoads
Available at your local bookstore and online
Click here to buy online