Thrift Week 2022, Day Three: Ditch Disposables

For the third day of this year's Thrift Week, I present...

Ecofrugal Principle #3: Ditch Disposables

As a general rule, replacing a pile of disposable products with a single reusable one is a financially and environmentally sound move. This isn't true 100 percent of the time; for example, in 2019 I wrote about how single-use plastic bags are generally better for the environment than reusable canvas bags. And more recently, Pocket served me up a story about how reusable plastic shopping bags are making the problem of plastic waste worse (though when you read it in full, that turns out to be because most people aren't actually reusing them).

Similarly, reusable items aren't absolutely guaranteed to save you money. For example, in another 2019 post, I calculated that the silicone LastSwab, which can be reused "up to 1,000 times," was 2.5 times as expensive as disposable cotton swabs. (The cost of the LastSwab has since dropped from $16 to $12, but that still makes it twice as expensive.) And a couple of other reusable items, such as a bidet toilet seat to replace toilet paper and a water flosser to replace dental floss, would take so long to pay for themselves that I couldn't justify the up-front expense.

So replacing single-use items with reusable ones isn't always the best choice. Before investing in a cool reusable alternative, it always makes sense to do a little research, crunch a few numbers, and make sure it really is a money-saver and, ideally, a planet-saver. But in most cases, you'll find the math does work out in your favor.

I already provided several examples of this in my 2019 Thrift Week series, so I'll just recap a few of the better ones here:

• Zero-waste tap water costs a tiny fraction of the price of bottled water. If you currently buy just one 16-ounce bottle of water a day at $1 a pop, that's $365 per year for 45.6 gallons. Replace that with a $2 glass juice bottle that you rinse out after drinking the juice and refill with tap water at 0.6 cents per gallon, and you cut the cost to around $2.27. And you keep 365 plastic bottles out of the waste stream.
• As I calculated in this Money Crashers piece, using paper napkins at every meal costs around $44 per year. Replace them with a $10 set of cloth napkins that you can use for 10 years, and you save around $40 per year, even factoring in the laundry costs. (The number of trees saved is harder to calculate, but it's more than zero.)
• According to one California Congresswoman's calculations, the average woman spends $7 a month on disposable tampons and sanitary pads. That's more than $3,000 over the course of her fertile years, plus 360 pounds of waste going into landfills. But I've been using the same set of reusable cotton pads for decades, and I fully expect them to last me until menopause. A young person just embarking on the menstrual journey today could buy a similar set for $34 (or two or three, as needed) and be set for life. Or go with the more modern option, a reusable menstrual cup or menstrual disk, that lasts for up to ten years.
• Here's one that doesn't apply to our family, but could have a huge impact for families with kids: cloth diapers. According to my calculations in this article, disposable diapers for one child, from birth to age three, can cost anywhere from $1,440 to $2,880. Cloth diapers, by contrast, cost between $600 and $1,870 over the same period — a huge range, but a significant savings in almost every case. And if you reuse the same diapers for a second kid, the savings more than double. (The environmental benefit are less clear-cut, but the cloth diapers appear to have the edge on average. See the article for details.)
  

Bottom line: if a large portion of your household trash is made up of disposable objects, it's always worth a quick search for reusable alternatives. If there is one, it's very likely to save you money and shrink your burden on the planet. Plus, you won't need to take out the garbage nearly so often.