Imagine time travel was a thing, we worm-holed our way back to 1900 and convinced a bewildered bystander to get into our telephone booth with us. Upon arrival in the present, they wouldn’t recognize the consumer products on this list. And while they wouldn’t recognize heart transplants either, those provide a benefit. The following don’t really, other than to marketers who earn big bucks to sell us stuff we don’t need. So if our time traveler sells snake oil, they might be pretty excited.
Cut these products from your life and save lots of money. (Go here for 21 more consumer products to ditch. And go here for another 9.)
Multivitamins
Let me preface the following by stating that I am not providing medical advice. If you have a condition that requires supplements, listen to your healthcare provider. However, most healthy consumers waste their money buying multivitamins. The packaging is also a waste: oversized plastic bottles with thick plastic lids, a synthetic wad of cotton-esque fabric stuffed in the bottle, all of which may be packaged in a box.
The global vitamins and supplements market was worth $129.60 billion in 2021—and continues to grow. However, this 2019 study, similar to studies before it, found that the use of “dietary supplements is not associated with mortality benefits among U.S. adults.” And in fact, certain supplements pose potential health risks. Those that cost hundreds of dollars per year put your wallet at risk as well.
To layer on further discredit, many multi-level marketing (MLM) companies sell vitamins and supplements. Almost no one makes money through MLMs. If a friend pressures you to join a vitamin MLM, you’ll both sell vitamins and attempt to recruit more friends. The remaining friends you haven’t yet alienated will also sell vitamins. Who will you all sell vitamins to?
Alternative
You’d be better off spending that multivitamin money on fresh, local vegetables at the farmers’ market. They also taste better than pills.
Bottled beverages
Speaking of vitamins, when you buy vitaminwater, you essentially pay for water plus some additives—but mostly slick advertising. Same goes for Hint. And while I’m no nutritionist, I think I can safely say that soda is unhealthy. Like soda, energy drinks also contain lots of sugar in addition to loads of caffeine (some brands contain more caffeine than coffee).
Every year, new novelty drinks hit the shelves in the hopes of being the next big thing. Stores near me sell a fizzy CBD-infused drink for seven or eight dollars per 16-ounce bottle! And of course, almost all of these are packaged in potentially chemical-leaching plastic. (Bottles made of recycled plastic leach more chemicals than bottles made of virgin plastic.)
Alternatives
For the price of one of those CBD-infused drinks, I can buy a 16-ounce jar of looseleaf tea at the bulk store and drink it all day, every day, for a week. I prefer looseleaf not only for its taste but for what it lacks. Many tea bags contain plastic in the bag’s sealant. The paper of some brands of tea bags contains plastic. And in the case of supposedly upscale “silky” synthetic bags, the bags themselves are made entirely of plastic. (Synthetic is plastic by another name.) One of these silk-like bags can shed billions of microplastics into a single cup of tea.
In addition to tea also brew up ginger beer, kombucha, naturally carbonated lemonade and other natural sodas, iced tea and so on when I want a treat. These all taste incredible!
Store-bought salad dressing
This popular brand of balsamic vinaigrette costs four bucks, on sale. It contains: “Water, Balsamic Vinegar (Wine Vinegar, Concentrated Grape Must, Caramel Color), Soybean Oil, Sugar, Salt, Contains 2% or Less of: Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Spice, Xanthan Gum, Natural Flavor, Annatto Extract (Color), Sodium Benzoate and Sorbic Acid and Calcium Disodium EDTA (to Protect Quality).”
Fat (the soybean oil and minimal olive oil) does not mix with plastic. As this Guardian article advises, “Don’t store fatty or oily foods in plastic—many chemicals used in plastic are fat soluble and are more likely to leach into fatty food.”
Alternative
A simple vinaigrette made with detectable levels of olive oil and my homemade wine vinegar will taste infinitely better than store-bought. Just add each ingredient to the salad, along with salt and pepper and toss. It won’t save much money but homemade tastes better and you avoid ingesting fat stored in plastic.
Bags of ice
At the grocery store the other day, I noticed a sticker on the entrance door that advised, “Don’t forget the ice!” With a little bit of planning, you can “Forget the ice!” skip the single-use plastic bags and save money.
Alternatives
Yes, frozen water is very convenient when we need it but we pay a premium for that convenience. I wonder if any company has bottled water vapor yet. Then all three forms of water will be packaged and marketed. (This company sells bottled air. And it has competition.)
You have at least a few alternatives to bagged ice:
- Make ice cubes every day several days in advance before you need them.
- Make giant blocks in a stainless steel bowl. Once frozen solid, let it sit at room temperature for a few minutes to melt a teeny bit before sliding it out. A large block takes longer to freeze—and longer to melt—so plan ahead and make your block early. The block in the pic below lasted in the cooler over an entire 4-day camping trip.
- Fill old plastic containers with water and freeze them. Good contenders are tubs of nutritional supplements or plastic drink jugs you stopped buying after reading this post. Leave a few inches of headspace to allow for expansion. You now have homemade freezer packs minus the chemical goo inside the commercial versions.
Gimmicky kitchen gadgets
Save your money by eschewing banana slicers, 3-in-1 avocado slicers and garlic peelers. I do have a couple of gadgets that I love—fodder for another post!—such as my grain mill. I imagine people sometimes buy these and never use them. I use mine regularly and love it; my family loves the bread. But most “unitaskers,” as Alton Brown calls them, are a waste of money and materials.
Alternative
You can slice bananas and avocados, peel and mince garlic—and more—with an infinity-in-1 chef’s knife that you likely already own. Keep your kitchen drawers and cupboards clutter-free and save money.
Souvenirs
I don’t enjoy dusting. If you buy lots of tchotchkes, you have to dust the tchotchkes, move the tchotchkes, dust the surface the tchotchkes had been sitting on, move the tchotchkes back… If I buy a souvenir, I want something unique and well-made. For the most part, snow globes and miniature monuments and fridge magnets are landfill in transition.
Alternative
Pictures and memories.
Fast furniture
Like fast fashion, fast furniture also squanders resources and overburdens landfills.
The EPA estimates that 9 million tons of furniture are tossed every single year. That’s roughly 5% of everything brought to landfills (a sizable chunk, especially when you consider the amount of food waste and packaging materials thrown away). Not only is it wasteful, but it’s also not a good investment.
“The Fast Furniture Problem,” Architectural Digest
Alternative
I’ll preface this by saying that if I need a new mattress, I’ll buy a new mattress. But for other furniture, I’ll look for secondhand. My daughter MK has moved home for at least a year and needs a dresser, for example. I’ll look first at Habitat for Humanity’s Restore. One hundred percent of profits support Habitat’s building of affordable housing. If I can’t find a dresser at ReStore, I’ll look for an estate sale or check Facebook Marketplace, my Buy Nothing Group or the curb. (I’m amazed by what I find at the curb.)
Facial tissues
The price of facial tissues won’t bankrupt you but disposables waste not only your money but also resources. Puffs, for example, are made almost exclusively from virgin pulp harvested from the carbon-sequestering Boreal forest. You can’t make up such an absurdity.
Alternatives
Make yourself some reusable handkerchiefs. If you sew, cut out squares of worn flannel sheets or pajamas and finish the edges. If you don’t sew, cut up old t-shirts; the edges won’t fray. I store our handkerchiefs in a jar and keep a couple in my bag, along with an unpaper towel. The handkerchiefs take up little space in the washing machine after using them, they cost nothing and, best of all, they feel so good on my nose compared to paper! How did marketers convince us to buy the paper stuff?!
Workout clothes
Statista estimates that globally, the sports apparel market will generate revenues of $191 billion in 2022. Most athletic apparel is made of stretchy fabric—in other words, synthetics. When sythetic fabrics—polyester, nylon and blends—go through a washing machine, they shed plastic microfibers. A typical load can shed 700,000 of these tiny plastic fibers, which enter our waterways and all levels of the ocean food chain, from plankton to marine mammals to us.
Alternative
If you quarantined during Covid, you have old sweats and t-shirts lying around. Dig those out for the gym or jogging or however you exercise.
Halloween costumes
As of writing this post, Halloween is only a few weeks away. Like most holidays, Halloween has morphed into an off-the-rails consumer fest. This year, Americans are poised to spend a record-breaking $10.6 billion. Of that, $3.6 billion will account for costumes.
The NRF estimates that of that $3.6 billion, $1.2 billion will go toward children’s costumes while $1.7 billion will be spent on adult costumes. The remaining $0.7 billion is earmarked for pet costumes.
“How Much Americans Spend on Halloween,” Investopedia
Adults are a bigger costume market than kids (and thankfully, dogs). Most of these flimsy synthetic costumes will be worn once and either discarded immediately or after sitting in a closet for 10 years. And don’t even get me started on pumpkin waste!
Alternatives
Think back to your best Halloween costume of all time. I bet you didn’t buy much for it, if anything. If rifling through your closet doesn’t inspire you, consider hitting the thrift shop for ideas. Or organize a costume swap in your neighborhood or at your school. Save money and keep costumes out of landfill!
Check out my award-winning cookbook!
- Taste Canada silver for single-subject cookbooks
- Second-place Gourmand cookbook award in the category of food waste
- Shortlisted for an award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals
Learn more about my book here.
Your list is all things I don’t’ buy either, and I have told my kids last year, it was the last time I was contributing to their costume funds, which again was because of their last minute planning. Thank-you for reminding me to remind them to start thrift store looking. I actually have been looking for a basic bookshelf from the metro Vancouver Retore stores and their inventories are all down, but I will try again this Cdn. long weekend. I also started letting my grey grow out 5 days before the famous Cdn women broadcaster in TO was fired due to her now grey hair. I felt like the 500,000 women Celebrities, Heads of states and people who have fiancial and political clout that wrote in to c/o were also writing for me on my behalf. I am now going to put cocanut oil in my dry hair.
Yay for grey hair! Me too, I just stopped coloring my hair this year – it feels so good. I will have to try coconut oil though, haven’t done that yet.
Thank you for writing this. I feel exactly the same way. We are all complaining about inflation and how broke we are, yet still spending hard earned money on so much garbage. I love your words “in transition to the landfill.” We need to understand how much we are being manipulated into believing we “need” this stuff. We don’t. and we’ll be happier without it. And the planet will be happier too.
Good list with good alternatives, Anne-Marie. I do all of them already except for 3: store bought salad dressing, souvenirs (but not overboard!), and facial tissues. I could give up the first 2 but not the last one. I use too many and the “slime factor” means I won’t be trying it. I *did* however see reusable “light” mini pads I’m thinking of buying. Never knew they existed until I saw them on a random amazon browse.
Somewhere I read — on this site maybe? — that dutch ovens hold cold as well as they hold heat, so if you’ve room in your freezer you can chill the thing in there instead of using a cooler.
Most of your ideas I practice, but the ice block procedure is going to be my new one.
After reading this article again, what does one need ice for?
We needed ours recently when the power went out, which has been happening more frequently. I keep a block of ice in there at all times now. If the power goes out and stays out longer than a few hours, I move ice to the refrigerator to keep food cool and prevent it from spoiling. Also…ice for camping!
Great post thank you. And well done on the success of your cookbook!
Great stuff. We’ve been using cloth hankies/cut up t-shirts and family cloths for about 15 years. Worn out clothing gets cut up to use for cleaning up greasy things in the kitchen and washing windows/cars. Almost all of our furniture is second hand in one way or another. Our Pine Factory crate furniture couch is 27 years old and was chosen so I could recover the cushions when necessary (last time I did that was with yards of good heavy denim I found at a thrift store). We have rarely bought ice when we were on the road and needed it. Mostly, I freeze water in bottles to use in the coolers in the summer when I need to and keep things cold before I get home. When I was a kid, mom would freeze some gallons of water to keep in the deep freezer for when we had company and I was tasked with busting up the gallon. It also helps the freezer to run more efficiently to have the ice in there if the freezer isn’t very full. We don’t participate in most major holidays. Sick of the commercialized aspect of any celebration. Love the phrase “landfill in transition”. Go into any store and look around… think to yourself “Most of this will be in a land fill within 5 years”. I’ve been making fermented drinks and sauerkraut for about 15 years as well. They are delicious! I have never dyed my hair and am going grey… get lots of nice comments about too!
I wouldn’t wholesale dismiss supplements. It is best to get your nutrients from whole food, but even locally grown produce is not as nutrient dense as it was 50 years ago. It is almost impossible to get enough nutrients, even from a whole food diet, especially if you are not including organ meat. Magnesium is a mineral in which, almost everyone is deficient. Add in poor health and being overweight and its even more difficult to absorb nutrients from food.
There was a study in older (mean age 73) that showed over three years a multivitamin-mineral supplement improved cognition, memory and executive function. So there is value in supplementation,. As we age, it is harder for the body to absorb nutrients, adding enzymes or HCL can help with that.
Should we all take handfuls of supplements? No. But tracking your diet in a tracker like Chronometer you can see where there are gaps in the diet.
This is a wonderful pot Anne-Marie. I already do most of these things, but I do admit to the odd box of Puffs.
Everyone used cloth handkerchiefs when I was a kid, and they should be the next big trend!
Loved your list! Two items I want to comment on:
For facial tissues, I exclusively use cloth handkerchiefs, most of which are vintage finds. I’m in an upcycling social media group, and one of the questions I’m most bothered by, is, “[Someone] gave me some pretty vintage handkerchiefs. What should I do with them?” My answer is always to use them for handkerchiefs! They are wonderful to use. To cut them up or relegate them into a lesser ‘pretty’ thing is wasteful, imo.
The other is athletic wear. People who engage in hard or endurance exercise do need certain fibers for durability, and to prevent chafing and blisters, which can get infected and be true health hazards. But for a daily walk or jog lasting a few minutes, cotton t-shirts, shorts, sweats aren’t bad. I’m a bicycle commuter, and I wear my regular work clothing on my commute. No changing in and out of tech fabrics is necessary.
If you are swimming in an outdoor pool, as I am, you need to wear a swimsuit made from an approved man made fabric. Cotton sheds in the pool wreaking havoc with the filtration system.
Since reading your post, RUN-SEW-READ, I stopped using paper tissues & now use handkerchiefs that used to languish in my drawer. Thank you!
I love your description of souvenirs often just being “landfill in transition”! I still like to get the odd souvenir but try to restrict it to something consumable like a local honey or other edible. I also like items that have a useful purpose, like a tea towel.
Thank you for this! I was getting a bit slack and this is the reminder I needed to get back on track. I don’t know why I never bothered to question bagged ice. My husband needs a large amount for the beer-brewing process every so often so I’ve added “Make ice” to my daily list of chores. Thank you for not only alerting us to what’s wrong with this stuff but giving us good alternatives.
Greetings! I wrote this as a reply to your email, but soon discovered that wasn’t an option. So I hope it’s okay that I’m just copying the letter right here.
I wanted to let you know that I found much value in your email. You covered many alternatives to try, which I appreciate. I’d say 75% of it is something I can act on.
I also appreciate that you put all the information in your email. (So many newsletters make you have to click onto a site that is hard to read on my phone because of all the extraneous ads.)
Your way saves a lot of time!
I’m so glad I get your emails. Thank you for teaching us what we can do to help save Mother Earth.
Cordially,
Lija W
Tampa FL
Greetings! I wanted to let you know that I found much value in this. You covered so many items, which I appreciate, because many articles will tell you five things and stop there. But you gave me so much information, and I’d say 75% of it is something I can act on.
I also appreciate that you put all the information in your emails. (I don’t like to have to click onto a site that is hard to read on my phone because of all the extraneous ads.) Your way saves a lot of time!
I’m so glad I get your emails. Thank you for teaching us what we can do to help save Mother Earth.
Cordially,
Lija W
Tampa FL
What a beautiful sofa, you really lucked out!
I no longer buy kitchen sponges since adopting many cotton wash cloths and a glass canister to store them in. Since doing that I rarely need a heavy duty 3M green scrubber, but when I do, I just cut a small piece from my stash and use that. I likely won’t need to buy any more before I die (we had a 3Mer in the family so stash is rather large!) I also have a metal scrubber but find that pieces of metal shred off after a while and then can end up in my composter which I prefer not to happen. But maybe it doesn’t matter? It is an industrial compost site…
Re: ice, I was gifted some small metal cubes that I store in the freezer (they have some kind of liquid inside that freezes solid). They work great for an iced beverage (which I rarely consume since getting used to drinking water from the tap). I see plastic balls that also “replace” ice cube trays, but keeping those clean and their end of life issue is problematic to my eye.
As a person with allergies I prefer to have kleenix but I do compost it when used. Goal: I will aim to reduce my use through using cloth at home and take my kleenix only when away. I will also be ironing the cloth to improve hygiene. Another goal: At home I can also use cloth in the restroom for most visits so will just set that up. Fortunately, I have a small lidded container to store the used ones in between washings…Hopefully this change will be the prompt I need to get my bidet installed. (And yes I will use two different colors so I don’t mistake a nose blowing hanky for a bathroom wipe!)
Thanks for the reminders, Anne-Marie.