I've been successful in avoiding plastic bags while shopping for the most part. We have reduced the amount of plastic water bottles used at work, even though there are still managers who ask for them specifically when they aren't included for lunches and longer meetings.

Moving completely away from any plastic bottles has been much easier than I thought it would be.

Over the weekend I proved the "poor planning generates more waste" concept when I went to Target to buy some cat food and ended up buying three snack items (because I forgot to eat before I left to run errands) that all used plastic film packaging. I convinced myself that the outer boxboard packaging was the only packaging and completely forgot about the secondary plastic packaging that most snacks come in!

I wanted to share this mistake as a lesson learned to hopefully remind people to plan ahead as it can not only save time and effort but also prevent single-use waste from being generated!