I Went a Week Without Disposable Products. Here's How It Felt | Beating Boredom Over Chinese New Year

It wasn't such an ordeal.

The holiday has begun.

This is a chance to reset, but also a stretch of time you have to get through. However you spend it, you probably don't want to let a rare holiday slip by in the same old way.

Here's our Chinese New Year edition of Hack Your Life: two things a day. Turn left to pick up a new life skill, turn right to discover a few offbeat games. We've also run some wildly imaginative life experiments to give your curiosity some fresh inspiration.

Happy New Year!

I pulled a reusable bag out from the bottom of my closet, dug a Lock&Lock food container I'd bought two years ago out of the kitchen, and added a set of portable utensils, an insulated bottle, a handkerchief. I had put together a "survival kit" for myself.

This was my preparation for a one-week experiment: no disposable products.

You have probably heard more than enough lecturing about the environment and conservation, and yet when it comes to disposable products — above all their most common form, plastic — nothing has improved.

This past January, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) posted a public consultation on its website saying it was drafting policy to curb plastic waste pollution. A nationwide "plastic restriction order" that took effect in 2008 had already banned supermarkets, malls and markets from handing out plastic shopping bags for free.

Ten years on, food delivery and parcel shipping have made plastic use worse. According to a 2017 report in People's Daily, online food-delivery platforms such as Meituan Waimai, Ele.me and Baidu Waimai together handled about 20 million orders a day nationwide, and each order consumed an average of 3.27 disposable plastic containers or cups. The plastic bags used in a single day would cover 420,000 square meters — enough to blanket West Lake in about 15 days.

How hard plastic is to recycle, the damage it does and the vicious industrial chain it has spawned are a global problem; for that, see the 2016 documentary Plastic China. The year after it came out, China began banning imports of foreign waste.

The point of our week-long life experiment was not to hammer home once more how sinful disposable products are. They really do bring enormous convenience: cheap, available everywhere, clean and safe. And there is no denying that the technology keeps improving, with things like biodegradable plastics.

The better question may be this: now that consumerism has reshaped how we think and act, we buy, use up and throw away enormous quantities of goods — clothes, shoes, electronics — faster than ever before. Do you really need to keep buying and buying? Disposable products, the most throwaway things there are, might be one angle from which to look at our own habits as consumers.

Where Exactly Do We Need Disposable Products?

Having asked the question, we set two concrete goals for the experiment:

1. Disposable products have seeped into every corner of life — when are you not even aware they are there?

2. If you wanted to keep living without them, what would it cost you?

Then I set the scope. I would cut out disposable products that weren't strictly necessary, while anything tied to personal hygiene and safety couldn't be replaced — so toilet paper was obviously still allowed, and things like medical syringes were out of scope too.

I racked my brain for every trace of disposable-product use in daily life, then prepared replacements accordingly. First, food and drink: takeout containers and drink cups are disposable, and even eating in a restaurant might get you a set of disposable utensils, so I needed to bring my own utensils and cup.

Next, tissues. I usually carry a pack around to wipe my hands, my keyboard, my desk — that kind of bottomless supply obviously ran against the experiment, so I swapped it for a handkerchief.

Beijing's air is bad and an anti-smog mask is a necessity, so for the sake of my health I couldn't avoid disposable ones. But on days without smog I was also in the habit of wearing a disposable non-woven mask out the door; this week I would use a cloth mask instead.

Plenty of guides also mention shopping bags: bring your own and you don't have to take the plastic ones stores hand out.

With my assumptions sorted and my supplies ready, I started.

The Experiment Fell Apart on Day One

The first day was a little dispiriting.

I stuffed the kit into my backpack, which did add weight. On a normal day the bag already holds my work laptop, various charging cables and a power bank, and on gym days clothes and shoes as well. There wasn't much room left for a kit holding a lunchbox, a cup, a small towel and the rest. It got heavy.

After lunch at a noodle shop, I decided to try something relatively easy: taking my own insulated bottle to Starbucks for a coffee. Starbucks lets you bring your own cup, but I had never used the option — paper cups are convenient, clean and seal well enough.

It went smoothly. The barista answered without missing a beat that I could use my own cup, and that it came with a 3-yuan discount. I quietly did the math: my insulated bottle cost nearly 300 yuan, which meant 100 cups of coffee just to break even. That didn't seem worth it.

My bottle had no label, so the barista couldn't call out a name when the drink was ready. Not a big problem — I just kept an eye on it.

In the ten-odd minutes I stood waiting, not one other person skipped the paper cups Starbucks provides, the way I had.

Trouble came soon enough. Ten minutes earlier, when I ordered, I had been talked into spending a coupon on my membership card on a box of cake. Only once the cake was in my hand and I was out the door did it hit me that the packaging was a disposable paper box, the kind cake shops always use.

I had noticed the paper cup while ordering coffee, and completely overlooked what the food came wrapped in. That blind spot probably comes from habit: walk into any cake shop and the paper box never registers as a question. It just feels like a given.

Back at the office, handing the cake around to my coworkers, I found a disposable plastic fork inside the box too. Day one was a bust.

Still, it sharpened my eye for disposable products considerably, and I didn't repeat the mistake over the following days.

I also came to appreciate the insulated bottle. It saves money and keeps a drink hot far longer; coffee in a paper cup goes cold within half an hour.

Not every drink accommodates this, though. If you're into milk tea, bringing your own cup is a bad idea — one milk tea shop turned me down flat. At another coffee shop the staff said my bottle was too tall to fit under the machine's spout; after I insisted, they poured the coffee into a paper cup and then into my bottle. Which saved nothing at all.

And if you want a bottle of soda or mineral water at a supermarket or convenience store, the plastic bottle is simply unavoidable. So for that week I cut myself off from bottled and canned drinks entirely.

No Takeout — So How Do You Eat?

I use food-delivery apps all the time. There usually isn't much time at lunch, and I don't want to spend it queuing and jostling in a restaurant. Delivery is efficient, and I can do other things while I wait.

But almost all delivery food comes in disposable packaging: a layer of containers, a plastic bag over that, plus chopsticks, cutlery and napkins. Most delivery apps now offer a "no disposable utensils" option, but in my experience almost no restaurant ever notices the request; they send the utensils anyway.

My first plan was to get up and go out to eat. At lunch on day three, I put my container in my reusable bag and went to the 7-Eleven downstairs to buy a bento box.

Many people probably don't know that Beijing's 7-Elevens sell sealed bento boxes as well as a pick-your-own selection of dishes. The latter is a bit like eating in a cafeteria: you choose the dishes you want and load them into a bento box yourself, no heating required.

Buying food went smoothly too. My own container fully replaced the disposable box, the staff didn't refuse it, and it created no extra trouble at the register.

The biggest problem was washing up. If your office doesn't have a properly equipped kitchen, cleaning dishes becomes a real chore. I failed at it on the first day: there was no dish soap at the sink, so the container was still greasy after I rinsed it.

So I ended up carrying the container home.

For Groceries, Go to the Wet Market

My second plan for meals was to cook. I shop often at the supermarket near my apartment, so I set out with my reusable bag.

Fruit and vegetables at a supermarket come in roughly two kinds of packaging: the pre-cut ones sit in plastic trays sealed with cling film, while loose produce has to go into a thin plastic bag, get weighed, and have a price tag stuck on.

Under my own rules I obviously couldn't buy the first kind, and it turned out I couldn't really buy the loose vegetables either. Ever since the plastic restriction order, supermarket carrier bags have cost money openly, but the clear bags used for produce have always just sat there, free for anyone to take.

All I had brought was a reusable bag. Supermarket staff told me that to have anything weighed, it had to go into one of those thin plastic bags. The problem was where the price tag would go. A head of napa cabbage, sure, you can stick the tag on the cabbage — but what if you want two or three tomatoes? And how would it work at all for sunflower seeds or peanuts?

There was no way around it. In the end I left the supermarket and went to look at a wet market nearby.

The wet market turned out to be far more accommodating.

At a stall you pay for what you buy on the spot, no price tags needed. Vendors still reached for a plastic bag first after weighing something, but none of them refused my own basket or bag.

At the vegetable stall I asked the vendor to tip the vegetables straight into my reusable bag after weighing them. No problem at all.

Some things couldn't be solved, though. If I bought chicken, duck, fish or meat, I could hardly drop those wet, dripping things into the reusable bag with everything else. I also hadn't brought a resealable plastic bag I could use again and again (I prepared one afterwards, just in case), so in the end I decided to eat vegetarian that meal, and bought only tomatoes, green peppers and some fruit.

The Kit Kept Getting Heavier, and the Trade-Offs Were Hard to Weigh

Seven days in, eating was still the most stressful part.

I ordered delivery twice. There happened to be a restaurant nearby that delivers with reusable tableware: two hours after the food arrives, they come to collect the porcelain bowls and bamboo chopsticks. Even the paper bag the bowls travel in doesn't stay with the customer.

Restaurants like that are rare, though, so most of that week I ate at places near the office.

There were also plenty of situations I hadn't anticipated at all, which forced me into trade-offs.

On day four I met a friend at a restaurant that didn't offer ordinary chopsticks at all. Every pair was disposable. In the end I used them.

What about straws? Under my rules I couldn't use those either. Since I also couldn't buy bottled drinks during the experiment, the straw question never actually came up. And once, over barbecue, the server brought out disposable gloves, the handy kind for eating lamb ribs. I couldn't use those either.

That week I carried the handkerchief I'd prepared, and it really was inconvenient. For hygiene I washed it every day, then realized once a day still wasn't hygienic enough — and washing it more often left it damp and awkward to carry.

So I added a second handkerchief. Add the dish soap and cleaning sponge I brought from home, plus a resealable plastic bag for wet things, and the kit kept getting heavier.

Every time I washed a bowl or a cup, I started doubting myself. If refusing disposables was meant to use fewer resources, what about all the water I was wasting on this elaborate scrubbing?

And thinking about hauling a pile of stuff out the door every day, the trade-offs really were hard to weigh.

I Also Made My Own Trash Bag

By the last day of the experiment, I had more or less gotten used to living alongside an insulated bottle and a food container, and to washing dishes at the office.

The last trouble I ran into was taking out the trash. Disposable trash bags are extremely convenient: fill one up and throw it away. If you refuse them, you either tip the trash straight into the bin and clean the bin regularly, or you find a substitute.

I chose the substitute. I happened to have a few non-woven garment bags lying around from the dry cleaner's. I made a small modification — cut one across the middle and sewed the open end shut with a needle and thread — and it became a small bag. I planned to use it again and again, though I had no idea how long it would last.

It looks a bit ugly. At least it works.

If You Want to Try Life Without Disposables, Here Are a Few Tips

Honestly, after seven days I didn't feel much sense of release. What I got instead was some hard-won experience. The insulated bottle really is good — you can even drink goji berry tea out of it — and I've decided to keep buying coffee in it.

The gym I go to regularly stocks disposable paper cups, and when I felt lazy and came without a bottle I would grab a few to drink from. During the experiment I brought my own sports bottle every time and didn't find it much of a burden, so I've decided to keep that up as well.

But there is no denying that much of what I did during the experiment could never become a habit. Takeout, for one, is still the fastest way to eat, and I don't intend to push it out of my life.

Disposable products are simply too convenient, and they turn up in the most unexpected corners of life. Shaking them off costs more than time and effort; sometimes it consumes more resources than it saves.

If you'd also like to cut back on disposable products as far as you can, here is what we'd suggest:

Before you buy something, think for a few seconds: is the disposable item necessary? Is there an alternative?

Get a shopping bag you can use for years — ideally good-looking and easy to fold, so you actually feel like taking it along. Bring it to the supermarket, bring it shopping. It is more useful than you'd expect.

Bringing your own cup has plenty of benefits. Don't be lazy and reach for a disposable one in the places you go all the time, like the office and the gym.

Finally, if a disposable product really is unavoidable, go ahead and use it. There is nothing to feel guilty about.

Cover image from Giphy