How I declared war on single-use plastic, paper and aluminium
27/8/2026
Translation: Katherine Martin
How hard can it be to produce less rubbish on a day-to-day basis? In a bid to find out, I spent three weeks avoiding disposable cups, aluminium cans and single-use plastic bottles.
We have a very murky sense of how much we consume and how much waste we generate. Be it in the canteen or on holiday, there are single-use plastic bottles and cans lying around on tables everywhere. And we consider that to be totally normal. I, too, used to bring a bottle of iced tea or a can of mate to every uni lecture and throw it straight in the bin afterwards. I didn’t realise how often I was doing so until I attended a seminar where we were encouraged to make our lifestyles more sustainable and reduce our carbon footprint. To achieve that, I had to zero in on a habit worth changing.
So I put my own wastefulness under the microscope. Mind you, I initially found it difficult to pin down just how wasteful I was being on a day-to-day basis. It was only when I discovered the 24-pack of El Tony Mate in my kitchen cupboard that it dawned on me: I consume far more sugary drinks than I realised – and produce a fair bit of waste as a result.
Source: Joel Brändle
So, why focus purely on drinks and not waste in general? Well, I needed something I could count easily without getting bogged down in the details. Let’s face it, doing that would eat away at my motivation. With this in mind, I focused on areas where I could make a big difference by taking simple steps requiring minimal effort.
The plan I decided on? To consistently avoid using disposable containers for three weeks. Instead, I’d drink out of a reusable bottle and a thermos mug. Every evening, I’d take a note of whether I’d remembered my reusable bottle or mug that day, and whether I got a discount at cafés for doing so. I didn’t set myself any limits or penalties. All I did was document my behaviour.
The bottle I couldn’t overlook
The first step I took was embarrassingly straightforward. Every evening, I set down a reusable bottle and a thermos mug next to my backpack. In fact, I made it so that I couldn’t grab my bag without seeing them.
This type of strategy is called nudging. It aims to positively impact behaviour, not by using force or mandates, but by skilfully shaping the circumstances and the environment surrounding it. Basically, you try to make the desired behaviour as appealing, convenient and simple as possible. Making it more fun to take the stairs than the lift, for instance, encourages people to take the stairs without having to put a «Do not use» sign on the lift.
In Stockholm, researchers conducted a similar experiment by transforming the stairway at a train station into a walk-on piano. As a result, many people opted to take the stairs instead of riding the escalator right next to them.
Applied to my own attempt to reduce waste, this basically meant wanting to stop making decisions. Especially in the mornings, when I’m just going through the motions. I tend to simply hit the snooze button on my alarm clock, make some coffee, brush my teeth and put on my shoes. There isn’t much time left in between these tasks, and I don’t feel like using too much brain power then either.
Did you know that about 43 per cent of the things we do are done on «autopilot»? It’s a result of developing habits – and routines like that are hard to break. As a result, it’s easier to adopt new routines than to fight against old ones.
For me, that approach was successful. The bottle ended up in my backpack on 16 out of 21 days, usually without me even noticing. It was sitting there, in my way, so I grabbed it. The second trick that helped me was buying a second water bottle so that I’d have a spare. My reasoning? If I was too tired to wash the dishes on a particular evening, I wouldn’t have a clean bottle for the following morning and I’d end up buying a disposable plastic one. Whenever I got into this situation during my experiment, I was able to fall back on my spare.
It was a different story with the thermos mug, which I only packed on nine out of 21 days.
Although I also bought a spare mug, I only ended up using it once. In fact, I forgot it on the train during my very first commute, leaving it to journey on from Zurich to Geneva without me. This mistake had a significant impact. Any time I forgot to wash my remaining mug in the evening, I didn’t have a spare ready the next morning. As a result, I’d end up drinking from a paper cup again.
Source: Joel Brändle
The financial incentive that never was
The third motivating factor contributing to my change in habits was the possibility of saving money. Tap water is free in Switzerland, meaning that every time you refill your bottle, you theoretically save one franc. Plus, many cafés give you a discount if you bring your own cup or mug.
So you get to do both the environment and yourself a favour. It’s partly about being thrifty, partly about rewarding yourself.
Over the course of three weeks, I managed to save 18 francs. Not a fortune, but enough to make me feel a little smarter each time I refilled a container. Interestingly, practically every café I went to in the city gave me a discount. At my university, however, they never gave me a single one.
The canteen just doesn’t do discounts. Since I was on campus every day of week three, my experiment log was marked with a big fat zero at the end of that week. As you’d expect, if an incentive is only available in certain places, it isn’t much of a motivating factor.
Source: Joel Brändle
Reusable bottles are everywhere, but reusable mugs are few and far between
The final step I took was enlisting the help of people around me. In the lecture hall, I counted how many people had brought a reusable bottle, and told my friends about my goal. I asked them for reminders and praise, but also asked them not to chastise me if I ever screwed up.
The simple reason behind this? We tend to follow what people around us are doing, whether we want to or not. If you’re at a lecture and everyone else in the room is drinking from reusable bottles, you’ll feel out of place with your disposable one.
In the first two weeks, nothing happened. I was working exclusively from home, using glasses and cups from my cupboard, and I didn’t have anyone else around me.
However, once I started going to lectures every day during the third week, things changed abruptly. Everywhere I looked, I saw reusable bottles on campus: in the hallways, in the library and in the rows in front of me in the lecture hall. The more I paid attention to it, the more normal it became, and the more natural it felt using my own.
By contrast, I barely spotted any thermal mugs. I guess they’re smaller and more likely to be stashed back into a bag. Plus, they have to be washed out at the end of every day, so people are probably less likely to use them.
Source: Joel Brändle
My sugary drink-induced relapse
There was one problem I hadn’t considered during my planning phase.
It’s easy to top up a bottle with water because there’s a steady supply of it available at every drinking fountain. But cola, iced tea and mate? Sadly, there are no fountains for those. So, in the second week of my experiment, I went back to using single-use plastic bottles – simply because I didn’t want to give up the drinks I enjoy.
With my guilty conscience starting to gnaw away at me, I went on the hunt for alternatives. First, I tried making iced tea from powder. But it just didn’t taste the same, so I soon gave up on that.
Then, I discovered that you can use a soda maker to mix your own soft drinks from syrup. The trouble is, I didn’t have a soda maker at that point. Instead, I bought a six-pack of 1.5-litre bottles of mineral water, convincing myself that it’d produce less waste than 18 small bottles. That was progress too, as I generated less waste than I had before.
Before I started my experiment, I bought an average of nine plastic bottles a week. Afterwards, I’d managed to cut it down by about half.
My verdict
It’s the unspectacular measures that work best. The bottle placed next to the backpack, the spare in the cupboard and making packing a reusable container part of your routine. The changes I made took hardly any willpower and became second nature after a few days. Discounts and peer pressure helped too, but only when they fit the given situation. When circumstances changed, their impact fell away.
Source: Joel Brändle
My key takeaway from all of this is also the most straightforward. Behaviour depends on routines, and routines depend on your environment. Different rules apply at home than at university. Similarly, different rules apply in Zurich than in St. Gallen. If you want to live more sustainably, you don’t need to be more disciplined – you just need to make the right choices easier than the wrong ones. A well-placed water bottle is more useful than any New Year’s resolution made at midnight.
As for my reflexive urge to grab a fizzy drink? It’s still alive and well. But now, it has to compete with the bottle staring me in the face each morning. Sometimes, that’s enough to be the start of something.
Have you ever tried to change your habits? How did it work out for you?
Header image: Joel Brändle
Joel Brändle
Retail Sales & Service Professional
Joel.Braendle@digitecgalaxus.chBackground information
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