LastTissue Box and the Importance of Planning Ahead

First order of business: our LastTissue box version is now live on Kickstarter! It has all the benefits of the LastTissue pack but with more tissues and more convenience that one could expect from a traditional tissue 📦box. Minus the 🌏environmental footprint! Check it out here on Kickstarter. And speaking of convenience, that is a major reason for planning ahead in life when it comes to making changes. Especially sustainable ones.🌿

We’ve probably all been there: we’re trying to eat better (or save money) but forget to pack a lunch and the few options we are stranded with are not within our new diet or budget. Or, picture having to 🏎drive fifty miles just to go to the gym: how often would we go? Convenience is key, and finding convenience with changes almost always requires planning and thinking ahead.

Plan for minor inconveniences with non single use

 Single use products started out of convenience. Things which are easy and time-saving tend to sell well, no matter the impact on the planet. That was the mentality. It’s true, having a single use to-go container is easier than carrying your dinner home in the palm of your hands.😆 Using a single use fork or chopsticks to eat your 🥡noodle-truck noodles is easier, and cleanlier, than using your hands.

But now we are realizing that we have reusable options as well. Reusable options which are also easier than eating with our hands or wiping our nose with our clothes. Better yet, our reusable options are still easier without creating the environmental harm associated with single use.👍

They aren’t however, as easy as most single use options. Reusable products typically require some small extra step, or simply require us to do things in ways we aren’t used to.

Instead of just grabbing a single use bag, container, or fork and so on from wherever you’re ordering, you’ll have to pack your own. This, is the extra step. Bringing your grocery bag when you go shopping, 🍴cutlery set before you leave the house for the day, etc. Oftentimes, it’s this simple step that causes us to not implement our new zero waste changes. It’s easy to forget, especially if we don’t plan.

Single use products aren’t without inconveniences. They create the inconvenience of breathing in💨 bad air (or pushing that inconvenience onto others), the inconvenience of having to depend so much on 🛢oil (or mass 🌾agriculture for natural materials), as well as the inconvenience of land and water pollution.

Nothing is free, and whatever we don’t pay for now...we will later.

So, we know that we should plan for inconveniences (or extra steps), but how do we plan for these extra steps? Well, here are some tips to give everyone a general idea of the things we can do to help our zero waste habits.

Maybe buy convenient (yet still zero waste) things

The good thing about zero waste swaps, is many of them don’t require us to 💵purchase new products. We can bring our kitchen cutlery with us wherever we go, we probably have a bag for groceries already, etc. But sometimes, there just isn’t an option to replace a single use thing other than buying an intentionally crafted zero waste thing.

Like for example: having a LastTissue box conveniently placed on your work desk or your kitchen counter may be very beneficial. But of course, only get things that will add value to your life.

Have things live places

Half of the battle is forgetting to bring things with us that we need. A solution? Find a convenient home for the things you need!

For example:

• Stash a cutlery set or straw in your bag
• Put grocery bags in your car, on the door handle at home, or on your bike
• Have a zero waste LastTissue box on your desk or your kitchen counter

Things like that in places like that. Where it's harder to forget or be without them. 

These extra steps will feel better over time

 We 🐒humans can get used to a lot, and we can adapt to a lot. But it does take some time. The reason a lot of changes seem tough is because we are used to what we’ve been doing, not what we are beginning to do.

Eventually, having a cutlery set or portable tissue pack in our bag will become the 🗓new normal. Eventually a reusable cotton swab in our toiletry bag will become normal as well. Or how about never leaving our house without our reusable water bottle or coffee cup? That will feel normal eventually too.

So don’t stress too much if things feel weird and different, but if it’s too much maybe back off a bit on the changes! This is where taking smaller, more consistent steps comes in handy. 💚

Sure, living a life that benefits the planet may require some compromise. And for some, maybe that compromise isn’t worth their time. But for others, it is worth it. For others, we’ve realized our values and have decided to make decisions that are in line with those values, added steps or not.

Choose to gradually change now so that we aren’t forced to abruptly change later. 👊