Have a look in your bin tonight. Not the recycling, the actual rubbish bin. For most Australian households, a decent chunk of what is in there is soft plastic. Wrappers, film, the bag the pasta came in, the plastic sleeve around a pack of toilet rolls.
Soft plastics have been the awkward category for years. Since the REDcycle collection scheme collapsed back in 2022, options have depended heavily on where you live, and plenty of councils still have nowhere for it to go. Worth checking yours, because the answer varies enormously.
The more useful move is upstream. Buy fewer things wrapped in the stuff in the first place. Below is a room by room walk through of where the easy wins actually are, based on what a normal house gets through rather than what looks good on a zero waste blog.
Start in the bathroom, because it is the easiest room
The bathroom is where most people find their quickest wins, mainly because the products are bought on repeat and nobody is emotionally attached to any of them.
The obvious one is the plastic sleeve around toilet paper. Every multipack you have ever bought came in one, and every one of them went in the bin. Rolls wrapped in paper instead remove that entirely, which is a small thing repeated fifty odd times a year.
Tissues are the same story. So are cotton buds with plastic stems, which have paper alternatives that work identically.
This is where Who Gives A Crap is genuinely useful, since the whole range ships without plastic film and the rolls come individually wrapped in paper. It covers the bathroom staples in one order rather than making you hunt down four different brands.
The kitchen is harder, so pick your battles
Nobody is getting the kitchen to zero. Fresh food packaging alone makes that unrealistic for most families. But there are three or four things worth changing.
Paper towel. Same plastic sleeve issue as toilet paper, same easy fix. Also worth asking how much you actually need, because a couple of decent cloths handle most spills.
Bin liners. These are never going away, but liners made from recycled plastic at least stop new material entering the chain.
Cling film. The most replaceable item in any Australian kitchen. Containers with lids, a plate over a bowl, or beeswax wraps if you like them. Most people who stop buying cling film do not notice it is gone after a fortnight.
Sponges. Standard kitchen sponges are plastic and shed microplastics into the sink. Loofah and cellulose versions do the same job and go in the compost afterwards.
The laundry, which nobody audits
Laundry products come in enormous plastic bottles that get used up and replaced constantly, and yet this room almost never makes the list.
Concentrated formats, refill options and sheet or bar based detergents all cut the amount of plastic involved. Whether they suit your machine and your water is another question, so it is fine to try one before committing to a year’s supply.
One more thing while you are in there. If you wash a lot of synthetic fabrics, a filter bag catches microfibres before they head down the drain. It is a fairly cheap addition that does something measurable.
The rule that makes this stick
Here is where most household plastic projects fall apart. Somebody gets enthusiastic on a Sunday, throws out half the cupboard, buys twelve new sustainable products at once, and gives up two months later when the novelty wears off and the budget notices.
The version that works is duller and far more effective. Replace things only when they run out.
Your current bottle of dish soap has already been made. Binning it half full achieves nothing except waste. Use it, then buy the better version next time. Do that across a year and you end up with a genuinely different cupboard, without a single dramatic weekend.
It also spreads the cost, which is the actual reason most people abandon these switches.
How to tell a real claim from a green leaf
This is the annoying part. Packaging is covered in earthy colours and vague words, and most of them mean nothing at all. A few things do mean something.
- B Corp certification. Assessed by an outside body across governance, workers, environment and supply chain, and it has to be renewed. Not a self declaration.
- FSC certification. Tells you where wood or paper fibre came from and that the chain of custody was tracked.
- Stated recycled content. A specific percentage is meaningful. The words “made with recycled materials” without a number are not.
- Published impact reporting. If a company puts real figures and partner names online, you can check them. If it only offers adjectives, that tells you something too.
For context on what that looks like in practice, Who Gives A Crap has been B Corp certified since 2016 and publishes where its donations go, including named partners like WaterAid. Half its profits go to clean water and sanitation work, and total contributions have passed 20 million dollars since the business started in 2012. Whatever brand you land on, that level of specificity is the standard to hold them to.
Things not worth stressing about
A quick note, because plastic guilt is real and largely unhelpful.
You do not need to make your own toothpaste. You do not need to feel bad about medication packaging, which exists for good reasons. You do not need to refuse the plastic punnet when it is the only way to get raspberries in July.
Household changes are worth making because they are easy and they add up, not because they are a moral test. The people who keep them going for years are the ones who never treated it as one.
Where to start this week
Pick one room. The bathroom, ideally, since it has the fewest complications and the changes are basically invisible in daily life.
Swap the paper products when the current pack runs out. Deal with the kitchen when the cling film finishes. Get to the laundry when the bottle empties. Then leave it alone and let the year do the work.
The whole thing takes about ten minutes of decision making spread over twelve months, which is a much better deal than any single ambitious weekend.
