Changing how you live doesn’t happen overnight. Often we want quick results, but that’s not how things work. When we try to change ourselves it’s a continual practice, it’s a muscle and the more you use it, the stronger you become.

At the start, the amount of energy required to change is a lot, you make mistakes, you feel bad, you learn, you try again.

But one day you realize you don’t have to think about it anymore, you just do it, it's become part of how you live. You’ve learned, changed, and now it’s how things are- integrated.

This reusable bag substitutes for a ziploc or plastic bulk bag. I like that it doesn’t weigh much, so it’s easy to store in your backpack. You can’t be prepared for every situation, but there are small things, like this, that take little effort but help you in unexpected situations. The same could be said of a spork.

This bag is like our life, there are things we can’t change about it, it’s predetermined qualities. But there are things we can change: like if and how we use it, whether we care for it, and what we fill it with.

If you’re working on reducing your waste by changing your habits and you end up with a plastic bag when you don’t want one, it’s ok, just move on. Be kind. Let it go. You learn and then you do it differently next time.

We do our best. And sometimes it will be great, and other times it won’t. A lot of it is circumstantial, depending on what else is happening. Waste reduction is not only a matter of the waste becoming less, it’s a matter of people doing the internal work required to change ingrained cultural patterns that lead to consumption.

We can breathe, we have bodies, brains and eyes. Because of this, we can choose a new perspective. And we can keep small cloth bags in our pockets in case we need them. And we can use them. Because we can.