Alicia Cheng

I have had many similar experiences! Over the past four years at UCLA, I have accumulated many random tote bags from different campus organizations and programs, and I have finally gotten into the habit of remembering to take them when I go grocery shopping. I also tend to carry my backpack with me most of the time, so even on days when I forget bags or take an impromptu trip to the grocery store, I am able to avoid getting plastic bags. On occasion, I will need to get a bag or two, but when this happens I make sure to really minimize the number of bags I’m getting. Additionally, my roommates and I are pretty good about using those bags for different purposes so that they don’t just go to waste. I also have more recently been paying attention to packaging. I honestly hadn’t thought of that in a direct sense until about a year ago when I saw a pack of make-up wipes packaged individually (each wipe was in it’s own mini package). At first, I thought it would be really useful to buy because then I could avoid having to take the entire pack when I was going on a weekend trip or spending the night at a friend’s. However, I quickly realized that it was actually extremely wasteful to package each one in that way, as so much extra plastic was being used. I knew that the very very minor inconvenience of my larger pack of makeup wipes taking up a little bit more space in my bag was not enough of an issue to buy this pack. Since then, I have been much more cognizant of different forms of packaging.