Is "Plastic Free July" Even Possible?

I’m old enough to remember the beginning of the “Zero Waste” movement on Instagram, plastic-free influencers and folks who proudly photographed their trash jars. (Y’all, it was literally a jar they put their miniscule bits of trash in.) I also remember when people were suggesting we shouldn’t use medication because it comes in plastic packaging. Medications! The very thing that may be keeping us alive.

And while I’m grateful that the movement got me into sustainability, I’ve come to take on a more nuanced (and hopefully healthy) approach to my plastic consumption now-a-days.

I know that completely “plastic free” could never be me. I don’t even really promote things like Plastic Free July. (A challenge where people are encouraged to cut down or even stop using plastics for the month of July to bring awareness to plastic waste.) While I think that it’s important to bring light plastic use and the data about plastics and hormone disruption is deeply disturbing, I also recognize that it’s so ingrained in our lives that if I were to worry about every little bit of plastic, I’d have no time for anything else. And quite frankly, I’d probably be committed to a mental institution because that’d be A LOT of worrying. Spoiler alert: mental institution grippy socks are plastic too. Can’t even escape it there, friends.

That doesn’t mean I don’t make some efforts to reduce my plastic usage. I do! I also have some general rules around plastics and swaps I do while still remaining a (mostly) sane human being in the year 2026.