I’m standing at the supermarket checkout and I get that guilty, sinking feeling again. I forgot to bring reusable bags. Between organizing play dates, dealing with a small child’s playground meltdown, trying to cram in a home-cooked meal, and running my own business, surely I can cut myself a break for not remembering to bring canvas bags? Once I started Common Good, a company that makes refillable soaps and cleaners, this stopped being my inner monologue. My line of work shows me exactly what our plastic consumption habit is doing, and I can't brush it off anymore. You’ve seen the shocking stats. Americans throw away 100 billion plastic bags annually; plastic that can take over 1,000 years to break down. It's all heading into our oceans, and the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch floats into my mind as the cashier hands me my groceries in plastic and says, “Have a nice day.” All it takes is a few small changes in our shopping habits to make a impact. Let’s start with these five.

By this stage, leaving the house with a reusable shopping tote feels as second nature as leaving the house with my keys and my phone. I carry an extra grocery bag in my work bag and stash another one in our diaper bag. And yet, in taking a closer look at the waste that our family produces, saying no to plastic shopping bags barely scratches the surface of our plastic bag problem.

Finding solutions for the world’s plastic problem is an uphill battle. Manufacturers and consumers alike are now accustomed to products and packaging made lighter, less costly and more convenient by plastic, the iterations of which have only grown more complex. As it stands, we are manufacturing approximately 300 million tons of plastics across the world every year, and this number continues to grow.