Your Plastic-Free July Pledges

July 31, 2025

Plastic-Free July has come to a close, and we've drawn the winner for our "Plastic-Free July Pledge" gift card!

Of course everyone who submitted a pledge is a winner! We hope that any changes you've made this month are ones you can continue—at least in some capacity—throughout the year.

If you didn't make a pledge this month, you can be a winner too! Check out the ideas others submitted and think about something small and concrete you can do to make a dent in plastic waste:

Don't buy bottled water/take your own water bottle with you.
Take reusable bags when shopping (at all stores...not just the grocery store!).
Recycle/TerraCycle plastic bags at Full Circle.
Take reusable flatware with you to avoid disposables.
Take your own leftover containers to restaurants.
Eat less fast food (so much plastic and styrofoam!).
Eat less snack food that comes in plastic.
Switch to Full Circle products in less packaging.
Channel your ancestors . . . use things to their fullest!

These ideas cover a lot of the major actions that individuals can take to reduce their plastic footprint. Even if you do lots of these things already, making your own pledge can be a helpful exercise. It definitely was for me! It made me think about all the different ways you can tackle a challenge like this. For example, you could:

start by make easiest change you can think of
start by make the biggest-impact change you can think of
make a change that really challenges you
make a change sometimes (doesn't have to be every time)
make a change that involves a swap rather than giving something up entirely
make a change that requires a little more time or money
make a change that actually saves you time or money

I used almost all of these approaches in the two commitments I made this month. The first was to swap out some of the grocery store tofu (in hard plastic) that I eat for Central Soyfoods tofu (in plastic bags). I eat lots of both kinds of tofu already, so this wasn't a difficult switch. But because I eat so much of it, it's high-impact. The change did cost me more money, but I felt good about spending that money on a local producer who values sustainability. And I didn't completely stop buying the grocery store tofu—I just bought less of it. There's still value in making a change even if you can't do it every time.

My second pledge was to chew less gum, since the gum I like comes in plastic bags, and I chew a lot of it. This one was much harder for me. It was a challenge every single day! But I stuck to it and loved noticing how much less often I was tossing an empty package in the bin. Of course chewing less gum saved me money as well . . . and that helped offset the extra cost of the tofu. Win-win-win!

I'll be honest: Now that Plastic-Free July is done, I may get more lax on the gum. It's aways been a hard habit for me to break. But I will commit to being more mindful about it. Going through less plastic truly felt good. And continuing to eat more Central Soyfoods tofu and less grocery-store tofu will be an easy change to keep up.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this exercise with us, and I hope these ideas will get you thinking about specific changes you can make to cut out the plastic where you can—whether you start with the easy thing, the high-impact thing, the money-saving thing, or the thing that's really, truly a challenge!

-Justine