Plaine Promoters are individuals who use Plaine Products, love them and want to get others to join in eliminating single-use plastics while enjoying outstanding products. Plaine Promoters spread the word about our products and get 10% from every sale they generate.
Celia from Litterless is a champion of going zero waste in big and small communities. She co-founded Zero Waste Chicago and now runs an active Facebook group to help people go zero waste in Wisconsin, along with giving workshops and presentations on zero waste.
Tell us about yourself and Litterless!
My names is Celia, and I write Litterless, a blog about fitting zero waste into an otherwise very normal life. Even though I work in the zero waste space, I don’t have unlimited time or energy to be a perfectionist about it. Instead, I try to approach it simply and flexibly, with a healthy dose of realistic expectations. On Litterless, I get into the nitty-gritty of zero waste and explain exactly how I make decisions to reduce my waste. My goal is to do all the research myself so that zero waste becomes really easy for my readers.
Do you have a favorite post from Litterless or story you’d like to share?
I’ve been working on a series about doing zero waste imperfectly, which you can find here. It’s such a missed opportunity to think of zero waste as all-or-nothing – none of us are perfect. I do my best to keep my blog a welcoming, encouraging space, and that series is my effort to talk about the realities of living with less waste in a way that goes beyond a trash jar.
What’s your one best, easiest tip for minimizing single-use plastics?
A place to see a big immediate impact is if we make it a point to try to minimize our waste when eating out at restaurants. The plastic forks, the styrofoam to-go containers, the disposable cups: it can add up quickly. Instead, I recommend making a little “to-go” kit, which can be as simple as grabbing a water bottle and wrapping a fork from your kitchen drawer in a cloth napkin as you head out the door. When going out to eat somewhere that doesn’t offer reusables, I typically bring a water bottle, fork, napkin, and to-go container; once I made it a habit, it was easy to stick to.
What inspired you to create your state-by-state compost & shopping guides?
Zero waste is interesting because it’s a movement that has primarily taken flight on the Internet, but our ability to do it depends on resources that are really locally-specific. It can be a daunting task to scurry all over town trying to find a place to compost, to buy food in bulk, to buy OTHER food in bulk… you get the idea. The best way to easily access that information is to plug into a local zero waste group or community – but not everyone has a local group, or the time or energy to get involved. I hope the guides are helpful in that regard! I also made them because, selfishly, I needed a way to research the zero-waste offerings in places I was traveling to and I use them myself every trip!
What would you say is your favorite Plaine Product?
I use the shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and lotion, but the lotion is my very favorite for its light, clean minty scent. The bottle is currently upside down on my bathroom countertop as I try to eke out the very last drops from the bottom before sending it back to be refilled.
Besides Plaine Products, what else do you love to recommend people use to go zero waste?
I like to think about stocking a zero waste home as a process of slowly replacing items with more sustainable alternatives as the originals run out. Rather than running around making every change at once, it’s much easier to go slowly and to find one reusable alternative at a time. In our home, for example, we rely on Stasher bags instead of Ziploc bags, Bee’s Wrap instead of plastic wrap, and washable fabric rounds instead of disposable cotton rounds. Each is a ten-dollar switch and one that can slowly be incorporated.
