How easy is it to say no? Most of us don't like it or find it uncomfortable, but if we're following the five Rs of waste reduction (Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose and Recycle), refusing is the first thing we should be doing.
Refusing forces us to think about our daily actions, and there are two easy ways we can refuse to do things that are harmful to the environment.
The first is to say no to single-use, disposable items such as takeaway cups, wooden cutlery and plastic bottles - some may be better for the planet than others, but they're all used once and then thrown away, so still not a good use of our precious resources.
Taking our own reusable cups, bottles, and cutlery is easy - and will only be normalised if more people do it.
Many coffee shops offer a discount for taking your own cup - whether it's because it helps reduce waste or because it saves them the cost of a cup - who cares - it's a good incentive and should be encouraged.
The second way to refuse is the way we shop - which can be more difficult.
We can make choices that mean our impact on the environment is lower, such as buying seasonable vegetables loose from our local growers and markets or loose dried goods from refill shops rather than pre-packaged in plastic - often in a volume we don't want.
If you can't get to a market, you can choose loose options in the supermarket.
READ MORE: Have you ever checked the ingredients in household cleaning products?
Refusing to buy things in unnecessary packaging is one way of reducing our waste and showing the supermarkets we don't want their plastic, encouraging them to offer more plastic-free products.
There was a movement a few years ago where people left unnecessary packaging at the checkouts - leaving the supermarkets to dispose of the waste.
This pressure on the supermarkets made a difference - most of them now collect soft plastic waste, such as bread bags and crisp packets - things that can't go in our recycling bins.
There's some debate that this isn't solving the problem, merely shifting it, but it surely has to make supermarkets think about how they sell products when they're emptying the overflowing bins every day and paying to have them recycled.
While refusing might seem like an uncomfortable option, it can help reduce unnecessary packaging waste and put pressure on manufacturers and supermarkets to try harder.
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