25 Ways To Go Plastic Free For Earth Day And Every Day

We’ve compiled a list of more than 25 trusted products and methods to help you ditch the single use plastic and help move towards a sustainable world free of single use plastic. Vote with your money by supporting companies taking initiatives to go plastic-free. This helps you, our environment and all the animals in the ocean. With more than 11 million tons of plastic entering the ocean each year, we need to stop the flow. Making individual changes and sharing your story with your community will help. We also encourage you to write letters to your favorite companies and policy holders letting them know you value sustainability and living at one with our environment.

It’s estimated that at least 50% of plastic waste comes from packaging. Although ordering items online is convenient, online stores produce waste in packaging and carbon emissions. In 2020 it was estimated Amazon produced enough plastic in the form of air pillows to wrap around the Earth 500 times (Long 2020). Buy local and support small businesses when possible.

Take our 30 Day Challenge to refuse single-use plastic and see how intertwined your life is with plastic.

In Your Daily Life

Carry reusable utensils and straws in your backpack, purse, or car. Make a bag of used silverware or purchase antibacterial bamboo utensils. Perfect for take-out or on-the-go meals. Refuse plastic utensils and straws forever. There are many brands/options for plastic free straws, including glass, metal, paper, straw, and even pasta.

If you’re still buying single use plastic water/drink containers, refuse them! You are buying plastic not water. Switch to powdered drinks, water filters, and reusable bottles. Companies who produce the plastic water bottles we buy (which are wrapped together in plastic with plastic labels) don’t produce the water, just the bottles. You purchase water when you purchase a drink. Go with bulk powders of your favorite drinks to reduce plastic bottles.

In Your Laundry Room

Swap plastic laundry detergent jugs for laundry detergent sheets. Every year, 700 million detergent jugs end up in landfill. The contaminated and colorful plastic jugs can’t be recycled. This is a no-brainer switch. After all, typical detergent is 90% water. Switching to laundry sheets needs to happen around the world. Just think of all the money saved on shipping too and reducing your carbon footprint when you switch and refuse plastic.

Consider using wool dryer balls to help your laundry dry faster and naturally soften without chemical additives. They come in fun designs.

Pro tip: wash your laundry on cold to save energy and hang dry to reduce carbon emissions.

Buy natural fiber clothing (wool, linen, hemp, cotton) rather than polyester, nylon, and other plastic clothes. When we wash our synthetic added clothing, it sheds micro plastics into our waterways.

In Your Kitchen

Ditch plastic bottle hand soaps for pellets. This brand has a whole line of household cleaners, too! You simply drop the pellet into water. You help decrease the carbon footprint on our planet when switching to these.

Bees wax wraps make great food covers. There are lots of options for designs. You can make your own, too. Never buy plastic cling wrap again!

Refuse resealable baggies. Choose stasher silicon reusable snack packs. Perfect for snacks, sandwiches, freezer items, and other non-food related things like cosmetics. These bags are leak-proof, durable, and come in a great selection of color. There’s also disposable paper snack bags.

Reduce food and plastic waste with these food huggers reusable silicon savers. You’ll never need the plastic cling wrap again, as these food huggers come in reuseable shapes and sizes for every fruit and vegetable in your fridge.

Add these mesh produce bags to your reusable shopping bags for your next trip to the grocery store. No more plastic produce plastic waste! Feel good about eating healthy and saving our planet.

Swap paper towels for reusable towels. Over 51,000 trees are cut down every year just so we can dry our hands with paper towels (in the US!). Make the easy switch from paper towels wrapped in plastic to these durable, washable towels in fun designs.

It’s a great choice to drink coffee at home. Ditch paper/plastic cups for your own mug, but what about trash from coffee pods? Refuse plastic pods, switch to Nespresso. Nespresso makes recycling their aluminum pods super easy.

Pro tip: open your refrigerator and asses the plastic. Where does your plastic come from? Are there products you can make instead of buy, like salad dressings? Can you opt for unpackaged non-plastic versions of vegetables like lettuce, tomatoes, spinach, broccoli? Shop at farmers markets and buy locally. If you can’t shop without purchasing plastic containers, write a letter to the grocers and the manufacturers!

In Your Bathroom

Switch from plastic toothbrushes to bamboo toothbrushes. Bamboo is a fast-growing and compostable resource that requires no fertilizer. Dentists recommend switching our toothbrushes every 2-3 months. The US throws away approximately 1 billion plastic toothbrushes every year, switching to bamboo toothbrushes alleviates plastic waste.

Ditch the plastic toothpaste tube for chewable toothpaste pellets. Like our toothbrushes, the US alone discards more than 1 billion toothpaste containers every year too. That’s 2 billion plastic products ending up in the landfill and environment just because we all need to brush our teeth!

Companies have designed mouthwash pellets too to replace the large plastic bottles. Check out these mouthwash pellets, too. Just add water!

Make the ocean proud by continuing your oral care routine with plastic-free floss. If everyone followed their dentist’s recommendations to floss every day, the single use plastic floss waste (just in the US for one year) would circle around our planet Earth 1,246 times. And that’s just the floss itself, don’t forget the millions of plastic containers, too.

Plastic-free make up is a great alternative to high waste, animal tested, and chemically-packed brands.

Disposable plastic razors for sturdy, reusable razors. How often do you switch out your razor? Every week or two? That’s an unthinkable amount of plastic. Make the simple switch to a reusable body and simply change out the blades as needed. Electric razors are another long-lasting alternative.

Refuse the bulky plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner with bar shampoo and conditioner products. They come in many different scents we all love! Approximately 552 million shampoo bottles end up in the landfill every year… Double that with conditioner and that’s a billion plastic products per year.

Switch from a plastic deodorant stick to compostable plant-based plastic-free deodorant. The ocean, and your friends, will thank you!

Switch from disposable pads and tampons for comfortable earth and ocean friendly menstrual cups. Lots of brands to choose. Research for your individual needs to find what works best for you.

Save trees by switching to bamboo toilet paper. Americans use more toilet paper than anywhere else in the world. Not only does toilet paper kill trees, but it requires absurd amounts of water and chemicals to process. Go for the more sustainable option of bamboo, which is notoriously soft and comes in plastic-free packaging.

Refuse plastic swabs. Keep your ears clean with paper swabs. 2 million cotton swabs are discarded every day in the US. Check out this reusable swab gaining lots of attention.

We want to hear from you. Please share any other ideas you have with us in our comments and your favorite products. We want to continue to grow this list and make these products accessible to everyone. Share with friends, family, coworkers. We realize many of these products you need to buy online as they are not mainstream yet! By purchasing them, writing letters to your grocers and policy leaders will help create the paradigm shift needed on our planet so we can all live at one with our environment.