Ready to take your green life further, but not sure how?  Living a plastic-free life is a great way to reach the next green standard of earth-friendly living.  But before I tell you how we’ve taken steps to becoming plastic free, let me tell you a bit about my wife.

I love my wife to death.  One thing I love most about her is how caring she is to me, our children, and equally importantly, the Earth.  She transformed my thinking about how we can care for our environment, and she is a constant inspiration to me in this regard.  I give her full credit for taking the initiative to rid our lives of plastic, and the best I can do is share our story and message with the world here.  Like many of her green ideas, I gave her the, “that’s not possible” look when she first explained it to me, but again, she has proven to me that, like Justin Bieber becoming a pop sensation, anything is possible.

Why go plastic free?  Well, you’ll avoid possibly harmful plastics that contain BPA or other toxins, and you’ll be disposing of less plastic, which does the environment a huge favour.

Here are eight little (and big) ways that we have gone plastic-free, and you can too:

1. Replace all “tupperware” containers with glass containers. My wife went on a mission to find glass containers of all sizes, and she did.  We donated all our old “tupperware” and put our bright and shiny new glass containers on the shelf in their place.

2. Bring your own bags to the supermarket. It is amazing how many plastic bags supermarkets use.  Double bagging, triple bagging, doggy bagging… the bagging never ends, 24/7… its enough to make your eyes go cross.  We bring our own cloth bags every time we shop.  (If I had a nickel for every time I’ve had to say, “I don’t need any plastic bags.”)

3. Avoid plastic packaging and bagging fruits and veggies. Some people give me a crazy look, but, if I buy five apples, I just throw them in my shopping cart without putting them in a plastic bag.  There’s no need to put them in a plastic bag.  When I put them on the conveyor belt at the cash, I just put them in a neat pile together, the cashier weighs them, I put them in my cloth shopping bag, and I’m done.  Also, if I’m buying say, tomatoes, and I have the option of buying tomatoes that are pre-packaged in a plastic container or tomatoes that are just hanging out in the open, I’ll choose the latter, and I won’t put them in a plastic bag.

4.  (I’m going to sound like a broken record with this one) Use cloth diapers. This is a biggie, and I’ve said this many times before… its simply a great way to reduce waste and plastic usage.

5.  Get a stainless steel water bottle. We use Klean Kanteen water bottles, and they are, simply put, awesome.  They are made of stainless steel, are BPA free, and do not have any synthetic lining that some other steel water bottles have.  It keeps the water tasting fresh and clean.  The benefits of using a stainless steel water bottle are twofold: a) you avoid using a plastic water bottle, which may have BPA, or just makes the water taste like plastic after awhile, and b) you avoid buying bottled water, which is a huge waste of plastic.

6.  Throw out the vinyl shower curtain. We had the luxury of renovating our bathrooms recently, and when we did, we gladly threw out our shower curtains and replaced them with glass shower and bath walls.  Okay, this option is a bit more expensive, but it is worth it in the long run, as some vinyl shower curtains (especially those containing polyvinyl chloride) have been shown to release toxic chemicals into the air.

7.  Get stainless steel lunch boxes for the kids. There are cool stainless steel lunch boxes available these days that have that retro look and feel to them that makes them even more cool.  We did away with the kids’ plastic lunch boxes and replaced them with stainless steel ones.

8.  Breastfeed. If your wife (or you, if you’re a mom reading this) can breastfeed, by all means, do it.  Not only are there a zillion other benefits to breastfeeding, but you also don’t need to use any plastic bottles to do it.  I realize there are reasons why some moms can’t breastfeed, but if you can, then this is a great way to go plastic free.

Are you going plastic free, or are you inspired to try now?  Leave a comment and let me know what you think!

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