Smart Ways To Go Zero-Waste (Without Buying Anything New)

Certain household objects have become the face of zero-waste living. Think: Mason jars, stainless-steel straws, reusable coffee thermoses, menstrual cups. These are all well and good (and I’ll cop to owning them all), but when we get caught up in the idea that going zero-waste has to look a certain way, we lose sight of the end goal: to get creative in our everyday lives and send fewer disposable objects to the landfill.

Sometimes you don’t need the perfect thing—you just need a thing. A metal fork pulled from your kitchen drawer and tucked into a cloth napkin is just as good as a special, brand-new kit of bamboo utensils. To bring leftovers home from a restaurant without relying on the Styrofoam clamshell they proffer, you don’t need the prettiest stainless-steel container in the world: A piece of plastic Tupperware you’ve had for five years will work perfectly fine, as would a rinsed-and-reused cottage cheese container or a glass jar that pickles came in and you’ve scrubbed to get the smell out.

To get what you need to cut down on waste, consider tapping into the resources that already exist in your city. Maybe you can start a local "Buy Nothing" group on Facebook and offer up some of your old items and ask others about their extra reusable coffee thermoses. Or you can host a swap for a group of friends and walk away with a few new-to-you items you've been looking for. You could also search a hashtag on Instagram to find other zero-waste folks in your area. For example, in my city I’ve met folks through #zerowastechicago.

But what do I do with my extra plastic forks, paper towels, and plastic toothbrushes, you might wonder? It’s a personal choice, but while throwing them out wholesale and starting afresh might be tempting, I’d advocate using them up first—and then improvising a zero-waste alternative.

One way to make sure you’re considering purchases more thoughtfully and buying only what you really need is to let yourself run out of the item in need of replacing first. So instead of filling your cart with what you imagine you’ll need, you can find out what you actually do need over time. And then you can stock up on a few bamboo toothbrushes to replace plastic ones, a menstrual cup to replace the pads and tampons you used to use, or a compostable dish brush to take the place of a kitchen sponge. Slow and steady wins the race!