Not as much as I thought! -- Neil Hagerty

Setting out into this I was trying to think of all the plastics that me and my one roommate use. After thinking about it for awhile I realized that without trying, neither of us really used many disposable plastics.

This wasn't because either of were particularly environmentally friendly, or because we purposely tried to avoid disposables. It was because neither of us were very wasteful people by nature. I actually collected for three days to get the amount of disposables shown in the pictures. By far the largest volume of dispoables that come from our house were plastic grocery bags, since we tend to only shop for one or two days at a time we make a lot  of trips to the grocery store and end up with a pretty sizable amount of bags.Granted some days it may be higher when the milk or laundry detergent runs out or something like that, but for the most part on the average day, all either of us uses are a couple of sandwich baggies for lunch and a yogurt container and occasionally other food items that come in plastics are discarded.

As for alternatives, I made sure the next time I went to the grocery store that I asked for paper(amazing how many places don't even have it as an option now!) The next thing I did was used the Tupperware that always just sits int he cupboard instead of the sandwich baggies, and also bought a large tub of yogurt and portioned it into the small Tupperware instead of buying the small single serve ones.

By doing this I realized it really is easier than a lot of people make it out to be to avoid discardables. Of course there are exceptions to this and some are difficult to avoid, but if we all put in some effort most of the common discardables could be greatly reduces. I know myself I will make even more of a conscious effort to take the time to ask for paper bags from now on when it is an option, and continue to use my reusable water bottle, and those are just a couple of small things!