“Isn’t this great?”
Seven pairs of eyes stare at me expectantly. I meet my mom’s gaze across the room, and she smiles as she holds up her new pack of reusable Saran wrap for me to see. The multiple pieces of thick, stretchy silicone bulge against the inside of the plastic packaging.
Wrapping paper crinkles beneath me as I shift in my seat. “Yeah, it’s cool!”
Several heads nod in agreement and the conversation continues on to other topics — but I lose track of what they’re talking about. My attention meanders around the room. First to the Saran wrap that’s perched on the center coffee table, then to the reusable metal straw with a carrying case that I was gifted.
My palms start to sweat.
It’s hard to ignore the stain lingering around these gifts: that even though they’re marketed as “sustainable,” the items may be doing more environmental harm than good depending on how they’re used.
I’m proud that my family chooses to spend their spare change on items they believe will decrease some of the negative environmental impacts associated with our lives.
As an Environmental Science major, though, I recognize that these products may not be any better than the conventional alternatives they aim to replace. Our education system hasn’t taught most people how to look past products’ packaging and assess whether or not the items can actually make a positive environmental impact.
In Eric Pallant and Beth Choate’s Environmental Science 110 class, students learned that in order to make purchasing an organic cotton tote bag worth the use of the resources required to produce it, you have to use it in place of a single-use bag at least 20,000 times.
The 2018 study by the Danish Ministry of Environment and Food that calculated this figure points out that this means using the tote bag daily for 54 years. Otherwise, the environmental impacts associated with production and harvest of the cotton, processing and manufacturing of the fabric, and transportation and packaging of the final tote outweigh the environmental costs of using a single-use plastic bag, which requires mining and processing of oil, as well as its own packaging and transportation.
Some nuance is lost in this sort of calculation, since certain environmental consequences are difficult to compare. For example, it’s hard to judge how microplastics’ effect on wildlife compares to the polluting effects of the fertilizers required to grow cotton, since they have vastly different effects on their environments.
This complexity indicates that if not used correctly and strategically, reusable products can be more resource-intensive and have worse environmental impacts than single-use products.
There is no one-size-fits-all for sustainable products. What is an environmentally-friendly product for one person won’t necessarily be the same for the next.
My family has silicone Ziploc sandwich bags, a cabinet bursting with miscellaneous tupperware, a pink silicone mixing bowl cover, mesh produce bags and reusable grocery bags. Unfortunately, we also have products that are gathering dust in our kitchen drawers — like beeswax wrap for covering leftovers and more water bottles than I can count — because they’re only pulled out once every few months.
It’s important to understand that even though the beeswax and water bottles were marketed as “sustainable,” they’re actually not because, per-use, they required more resources to produce than their single-use counterparts.
Put differently, the tupperware and reusable grocery bags my family owns are valuable because we aim to use them in place of single-use products often enough to justify their production, not because sellers have labeled them as “sustainable.”
Every family has unique ways they prefer to store food, cook, clean and run their household. To reduce your environmental impact, use reusable items that fit the specific ways your household functions — products you’ll actually use often enough to offset their larger manufacturing cost over single-use counterparts. This is personalized sustainability.
When wading through the already-dizzying consumer scene of items labeled with phrases like “green,” “eco-friendly,” “zero-waste” and “eco-conscious,” this added level of complexity may seem frustrating or intimidating. That’s a valid feeling, given that many corporations aren’t forthcoming about the cradle-to-grave environmental impacts of their products.
But it is essential that we try our best using the resources we have. Only by spending the time and energy to do a quick Google search about a reusable product or by learning about the general environmental impacts of certain materials will you be able to begin puzzling out what reusable items will actually be an environmentally-friendly choice within the context of your own life.
If you find yourself wanting to gift a zero-waste product to a friend or family member, consider talking with them about what single-use items they use on a daily basis that they might be excited to replace. You could also keep an eye out for what items consistently end up in their trash cans — perhaps by tiptoeing around to peek into their bins whenever their back is turned. This personalized observation and tailoring of the gift to the special person in your life will guarantee that you are giving them an item they will sincerely appreciate and get significant use out of. If you don’t want to spoil the surprise, include a receipt so they have the option of exchanging it for an item they would use more often.
Purchasing zero-waste products is not bad if they actually help you live more sustainably. If you need reusable Saran wrap so that you can transition away from using single-use Saran wrap, go ahead! If you don’t use Saran wrap already, though, you might be better served by tupperware.
Reducing overall consumption is the most fool-proof way to make decisions you can be confident are environmentally friendly. Think of reduce, reuse and recycle as a first, second and third-tier system: Reduce first, and if you can’t reduce, reuse. Recycle only after both those options have been exhausted.
So, before buying that completely new reusable item, consider again what’s already in your kitchen or visit your local thrift store in search of other existing options. Getting creative with what you already have will always be the most sustainable, environmentally-friendly choice you can make.