How Plastic-Free Living Helps You Stick to a New Year’s Resolution
There’s so much hope that comes with a new year. It’s a fresh start and a new chance to become your best self.
According to Inc, in 2019 the top 10 New Year’s Resolutions for success and happiness were:
- Diet or eat healthier
- Exercise more
- Lose weight
- Save more and spend less
- Learn a new skill or hobby
- Quit smoking
- Read more
- Find another job
- Drink less alcohol
- Spend more time with family and friends
Except for maybe smoking and drinking, I’m sure everyone could be doing more of these. We’re not perfect, so we have four cookies when we should have stopped at one or avoided them all together. We spend the night watching a season of our favorite show on Netflix instead of reading through the stack of books on our nightstand. (Not that I have any experience in this.) And of course, our running shoes can always wait one more day.
I get it. Temptations are tough and it takes a lot of energy to fight them. And these days no one has energy to spare.
But don’t fret. Living a plastic-free lifestyle can help with many if not all these common resolutions. “How?”, you ask? In a nutshell, here’s how:
By avoiding convenience foods and cooking plastic-free meals you can eat healthier, lose weight, save money, learn a new skill, and even spend more time with friends and family!
I know, it sounds like a bad infomercial but wait there’s more! Just kidding. But let’s break these resolutions down and dig deeper, shall we?
1. Diet or Eat Healthier
By eating foods that do not come in plastic, you’re generally left with whole foods instead of over-processed “food products”. If you shop along the perimeter of your grocery as I suggest in a Simple Guide to Plastic-Free Grocery Shopping, it will be much harder to make a meal that’s not healthy.
All the unhealthy (and addicting) items like chips and cookies are in the center aisles of a grocery store and packaged in plastic. So, avoid plastic and eat healthier. Simple, right?
Quick tip: keep healthy snacks handy
I find that snacks are generally what gets us in trouble. Choosing a cheese steak over a salad seems like an obvious fail when you’re trying to eat healthy. But a small snack seems innocent. Avoid this pitfall by keeping healthy (plastic-free) snacks like sliced vegetables or nuts in your kitchen or at your desk at work.
2. Exercise More
Living a plastic-free lifestyle won’t necessarily get you into your running shoes. But consider this, living a healthy lifestyle is a slippery slope in a good way.
If you start with eating healthier, you’ll feel better. If you feel better, you’ll have more energy. And if you have more energy, it will be easier to get yourself motivated to exercise.
Quick tip: Find a friend to exercise with. As with anything tough, having a buddy increases your chance at success
Most of my friends know that I HATE running. I did gymnastics all through school and I used to joke that the only running I did was to the vault. But after my daughter turned one and I still had 10 pounds of baby weight, I knew something had to change. So, I made a goal to run at least four times a week.
Luckily, my co-worker started training for a marathon. So, anytime she had a lunch time run planned, if I didn’t have a meeting, I always said yes. Most days it was an easy two miles but every other week there would be a 3 or 4 mile run thrown in. Before this I hadn’t run 4 miles in over 10 years!
Point being, find a buddy!
3. Lose Weight
Put #1 and #2 together and #3 should follow along.
Also, when you’re cooking plastic-free meals you can control the amount of sugar in your food. There’s more and more evidence that shows that eating sugar (not fat) increases weight gain.
Since fat has been demonized, you can find non-fat versions of nearly everything. And the most common ingredient added to a non-fat item to make it tasty? You guessed it…sugar.
Plus, like I mentioned above most junk food is packaged in plastic, so avoid plastic and lose weight.
In addition, I touched briefly on BPA in Why “Green” Plastics Aren’t Any Better. BPA is a chemical used to harden plastics. Unfortunately, it has been shown to leach into our food and studies show that it causes weight gain.
BPA causing weight gain is yet another reason to avoid food packaged in plastic. Ditch the plastic packaged food and lose weight!
4. Save More and Spend Less
By avoiding pre-packaged meals and convenience foods you save money. A fresh pineapple is much cheaper than a plastic bowl of pre-cut fresh pineapple. A head of lettuce and accompanying vegetables are much cheaper than pre-made salads.
The bulk section is cheaper than packaged foods. As I talk about in Bulk Shopping for Beginners, you can find dried beans, nuts, flours, sugars, granola, candy and a number of other goodies in the bulk section. Besides being plastic-free, the best part is that it is cheaper!
Let’s look at some bulk math.
I bought these organic fruit snacks in the bulk section and filled this jar for $8.02. I know, fruit snacks are not the best example if you’re trying to lose weight but stick with me.
Now that seems pretty expensive considering a box of Annie’s organic fruit snacks are $3.99.
But let’s look at how much you’re actually getting.
If you look closely, the Annie’s box has 5 pouches with 0.8 oz of fruit snacks in each pouch. For a grand total of 4 ounces or one quarter of a pound. So, multiply that by four and you get $15.96 per pound.
The bulk fruit snacks are only $10.99 per pound!
The packaged fruit snacks cost almost 50% more than the bulk fruit snacks!
Plus, it’s hard to tell in the picture but the bulk fruit snacks are 2 – 3 times bigger than the packaged ones. And of course, there’s no packaging with the bulk snacks!
Money saved and no plastic!
5. Learn a New Skill
If you don’t already know how to cook, this is a great opportunity to start learning. Begin with simple dishes like oven-roasted vegetables or spaghetti.
If you know how to cook the basics, see what you can make from scratch. I had a friend who was an amazing cook and she made everything from scratch. Bagels, mayo, you name it. This got me curious and ever since then I’ve explored all the things I could (and couldn’t) make from scratch like homemade pasta. And except for pastry dough most foods are relatively easy to make.
Cooking is a great skill to learn or sharpen since you need to eat 2 – 3 times a day! Learning to cook well can have a huge impact on your life since you eat so often.
6. Quit Smoking
Did you know that cigarettes have a plastic filter in them? Cigarettes used to be “unfiltered” until the 1950s when there was a growing concern over their health effects. To counter the concern, cigarette companies added filters to reduce the amount of tar inhaled.
The filters are made of plastic which is why cigarettes are considered a single-use plastic. Cigarettes are the top littered item found at beach cleanups which motivated lawmakers to pass a law this year banning smoking at California state beaches.
Now, I understand that knowing that cigarettes are technically plastic won’t necessarily help you quit smoking. And if you already want to quit you clearly have greater motivations to do so that avoiding single-use plastics. But if you do quit smoking, as an added bonus, you’ll be giving up a huge source of single-use plastics!
7. Read More
I started really digging into the issues of plastics when I became pregnant with my first child a few years ago. During that time, I absorbed as many books as I could read in preparation for my baby. If you’re interested in plastic-free living there are a number of books that provide tips or go into the science behind why plastics are bad for our health. The one that was most eye-opening for me was Life Without Plastic:
Life Without Plastic went into the biological details of why plastic is bad for your health and as a bioengineer I appreciated the deep dive into the science.
Overall, during my book challenge I inhaled books about plastic-free and zero waste living. I found that the more interested I was in the subject the faster I read. Obvious, right?
Quick tip: set a specific time every day to read
I always read before I go to sleep. I try to give myself an hour before bed time but sometimes it is only 15 minutes. And if it’s only 15 minutes I don’t let myself feel guilty about the short time.
Quick tip: take mini reading breaks
If you can’t carve out large chunks, take mini reading breaks. I use the kindle app on my phone and during my book challenge instead of scrolling on Instagram, I would read a few pages while waiting in line. It’s a small chunk but it adds up!
8. Find Another Job
Since adopting a plastic-free lifestyle, I’ve gone outside of my comfort zone and learned many skills that aren’t common in my engineering job.
I’ve practiced public speaking by giving a talk about reducing one’s plastic footprint at Workday and spoke on a panel about Microplastic ocean pollution.
I was recruited as the Rise Above Plastics program lead for Surfrider San Francisco where I work with City Hall to draft and pass plastic reduction ordinances.
I started this blog which practices writing, designing, and social media marketing.
Long story short, with all these new skills as a result of plastic-free living I could find a new job in a completely different field.
9. Drink Less
Although most alcohol comes in glass bottles, there are many tiny exceptions. Most wine corks are now made of plastic. Cans of beer (and aluminum cans in general) are lined with plastic. Most drink mixers come in plastic bottles.
Depending on the bar, drinks may be served in a plastic cup. Even if served in a glass cup, depending on the state, it could come with a plastic straw.
In avoiding plastics, you’ll be more selective of the drinks you do have.
10. Spend More Time With Friends and Family
Potentially the most important benefit of plastic-free living is that it allows you to spend more time with friends and family. People always find their way over when there’s food. Having friends and family over to cook a meal is a great way to save money and enjoy time with those you love.
One of my best friends had a flatbread/pizza making party at her house. She pre-made a stack of flatbread and had various meats, cheese, and toppings that we could use to make our own creations.
It was much cheaper than having dinner at a restaurant and much easier to mingle around and talk to everyone.
All Together Now
By adopting a plastic-free lifestyle it frees you to be your best self.
By not wasting money on convenience food products and cooking meals yourself, you save money, eat healthier, and learn a new skill. Plastic-free living gets you out of your comfort zone in a good way, which opens the door to many other positive changes.
What do you think? Are you ready to commit to plastic-free living in 2020? I think you got this!
If you’re not ready yet, leave me a comment and let me know what’s stopping you.
For related posts, check out:
- Simple Guide to Plastic-Free Grocery Shopping
- Bulk Shopping for Beginners
- Plastic-Free Pasta
- Plastic-Free Tortillas
