Travel Ready: Plastic Reduction on the Road

By Ruth Ann Smalley

I used to admire those well-prepared folks I saw rolling into the Co-op, their insulated bags and collection of bulk jars at the ready, all organized in a box at the top of their cart. They were so perfectly equipped, so…collected.  Meanwhile, I could barely remember to have a couple of cloth bags with me, and it was a rare occasion when I remembered to bring a jar or two. Life felt too hectic; while I could manage a laser beam focus in a couple of areas, shopping was, admittedly, haphazard. Getting collected was aspirational.

A collection, after all, is basically the definition of a kit. I finally recognized how much I needed and wanted this everyday superpower, when a set of parents walked into our homeschool group meeting carrying a kit. “It's a brownie-making kit!” they announced happily, pulling a few mason jars full of ingredients out of a box. With this and help from eager kids, they worked their simple magic and made the perfect-sized batch for all of us. Clearly, they were not rushing through life, putting out fires with whatever was at hand, like I was.

It seems trivial, but the power of such small, planned acts is outsized. Dan Charnas demonstrates this in his book, Work Clean: the Life-changing Power of Mise-en-Place to Organize Your Life, Work, and Mind, showing how this concept—of having collected your tools in advance—is fundamental to chef training. That helped me think more about how to “kit out” various aspects of my life and behavior. 

I started keeping my shopping bags in a fair-trade basket from Honest Weight. I gradually remembered not only to stash jars for bulk refills in there, but also egg cartons and used glass  ready to go into the recycle bins outside. I’d established my low-waste shopping kit and was surprised by how simple it was to keep the practice going. That’s the cool thing about kits–they tend to have a self-perpetuating quality that makes things easier.

My most recent kit demanded that I create it. After taking Judith Enck’s Beyond Plastic Waste course this fall, I felt newly-aware of all the ways plastic slides into your life, even against your will, and often under your radar. I took an inventory of the trash stash in our car. I didn’t like what I saw. 

We’re a two-person household and we both work from home, so an important part of our mental health routine is to leave the house on weekends. Our ramblings mostly take place within a 45-minute radius and usually involve a hike, a bookstore, a cafe, and a snack. I’m not scientific enough to have tracked how many trips’ worth of stuff was in our car, but the tally was . . . unacceptable. Way too much plastic! Even those paper cups are plastic-lined, and of course, had plastic lids slapped on before we could say no thank you. Carrying our own utensils and, sporadically, our own water bottles wasn’t enough. We needed a better kit. 

Now we leave the house with insulated mugs for hot beverages, and mason jars for cold. The independent businesses we stop in are happy to fill those for us. We also carry a stainless steel bento box with a lid, in case we go somewhere and need to take home leftovers. It works. It’s that simple.

What kits do you use? I’d love to hear about them–there are so many small ways to set them in motion to reduce waste—of resources, time, effort, and money.

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