Hey team, and welcome back to one5c! We’re about to hit the spendy time of year. Back-to-school shopping bleeds into Halloween. Halloween slides right into Thanksgiving, and then it’s off to the holiday shopping races. Y’all probably know us well enough by now to guess what I’m going to say next: Going full-tilt “buy nothing” is a prelude to failure. But we can all stand to buy less—sometimes a lot. Overconsumption is real, and its environmental impact is massive.
Today, our newest one5c contributor, Matt Berical, is laying out five pieces of advice for dialing back when the supplies list is staring you down. Don’t worry: The Bluey pencil case is gonna be fine. —Corinne
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HOW TO BACK TO SCHOOL SHOP MORE SUSTAINABLY
By Matt Berical
Another school year is here, and with it comes the annual pressure to refresh your kid’s supply of scissors, pencils, Disney lunch boxes, and any other ephemera for the classroom. The costs add up: According to the National Retail Federation’s 2024 back-to-school survey, families will drop nearly $875 on clothing, shoes, supplies, and electronics this school year. That’s the second-highest average since the survey began 21 years ago.
A lot of that spending equals a lot of waste. The goods themselves have a toll on the environment, but all the plastic packaging holding those legions of pens and No. 2s is almost immediately bound for the landfill. According to the EPA, 28% of all trash in the United States (that’s 82 million tons) comes from packaging. Lest we forget the microplastics shedding off those glitter-encrusted backpacks.
We’re not putting this out there to shame parents into sending kids to school with mini pencils yanked from the local Putt-Putt. Nor is it to minimize the importance of preparing children for the myriad pressures of the coming school year—or how the ritual of obtaining and organizing supplies can be a big part of that. It is, however, an opportunity to reboot and adopt a more mindful approach before you run to Staples.
Consider this: Back-to-school shopping is an opportunity to help children learn and grow. It’s perfectly reasonable to balance joy—say, buying that long-lasting Breath of the Wild backpack so your kid can feel happy and comfortable and express themself—with environmental considerations, notes Kelly Leviker, a Beyond Plastic Advocate for the Public Interest Research Group and a parent herself. A crucial part of this is explaining to children the reasoning behind your decisions, Leviker continues. Tell them why you’re shopping where you shop and why you purchased what you did and didn’t. “Equip your kid with the knowledge so they can see the philosophy behind what you’re doing,” she says. And tie it to something real. Every year, for example, Leviker takes her son to help clean up the lake near their home so he can see the plastic waste and the results of overconsumption.
As you outfit your kids for another school year, here are five ways to rethink how you buy your supplies.
1. Take stock of what you already have
Do you know how many usable pencils are currently in your home? What about Post-its? Pens? Highlighters? The first step is obvious but often overlooked: Do an inventory. “It’s easy for a lot of parents to feel so pressed for time that they just run to the store and get everything on the list,” says Leviker. “We can all be a bit more mindful by asking ourselves what do we actually need? Let’s dig around and see.” Doing so can also help you take a breath and drown out some of the back-to-school noise to buy! buy! buy! Chances are, you’ll find some usable items as well as others that can be easily repaired.
2. Check local thrift shops and buy-nothing groups
In Leviker’s Denver neighborhood, there’s a specialized thrift store that sells art supplies. Around this time of year, the owners stock up on common back-to-school necessities to encourage local families to purchase items there. “It’s such a great resource,” she says. “While one like it might not be in your neighborhood, there are lots of similar stores.” Her advice: Seek out supplies at thrift and secondhand shops as well as Facebook Marketplace and local Buy Nothing groups. Freecycle, a nonprofit dedicated to reuse and keeping items out of landfills, is another great resource. Members of local chapters list items they’re giving away as well as what they need. The cost savings is a nice bonus.
3. Look for refurbished tech
Does your child need a laptop or tablet this year? If you can’t find one at a secondhand store or marketplace, consider the refurbished route. “It’s a great way to find affordable items that are pre-used but still in good condition,” she says. This also helps keep e-waste out of landfills. All products sold through Amazon’s Renewed program are significantly marked down, cleaned, tested, and come with a 90-day guarantee. Such re-commerce sites as Gazelle and Back Market are excellent as well, with high transparency and assurances. And the sales are solid: A kid-appropriate refurbished Dell Chromebook that normally retails for $300 is currently offered on Back Market for $47. (The same shopping advice applies to clothes, as well, and our favorite secondhand marketplaces each have kids’ shops.)
4. Be mindful of materials
Listen, there will be items on the list you’ll want to purchase new. Maybe you want your child to have a really great water bottle or top-notch lunch box. In that case, Leviker urges parents to pay attention to quality: Avoid as much plastic as possible, and find products that stress longevity. She recently purchased a lunch box for her son made by PlanetBox. It’s bento-style and made from durable stainless steel. “It’s a little expensive, but it will last for the entirety of his schooling,” she says. “We’d gotten him a plastic lunch box the year before, but it was looking pretty ratty. I could’ve gotten him another and just continued the cycle of buying a new plastic lunch box every year. But what would be the point?”
5. Consider communal options
Certain schools offer programs where, instead of buying personal pens and paper, parents contribute communal supplies to classrooms. Pooling goods could be a great idea, Leviker says. “It potentially could mean that less supplies need to be purchased,” she says. It does, however, up the likelihood that items might be purchased new, which is a trade-off. “But,” she adds, “it could mean that supplies could be used in a classroom year after year. I think any potential issues could be worked out, as long as there is that intent.”
Matt Berical is a writer and editor based in Richmond, Virginia. Most recently, he was the deputy editor of the parenting site Fatherly for seven years. His work has appeared in GQ, Men’s Journal, Taste, Popular Science, and more.
THE ROUNDUP
In the news this week
The penultimate round of talks for an international plastics treaty are rolling this week in Bangkok, and for the first time, the U.S. is talking about dialing back production—bucking pressure from the fossil-fuel industry. In the past, U.S. negotiators have focused squarely on recycling and circularity. A growing body of evidence has found that all forms of plastic have adverse effects on human health and ecosystems.
A nonprofit arm of Shell has funneled more than a half-million dollars to groups that support climate change denial, reports The Guardian. Among the organizations receiving money—which was doled out between 2013 and 2022—is the Heritage Foundation, the conservative group that penned Project 2025.
There are some very delicious smells coming from our friends over at Pale Blue Tart. It’s brownies. This week, climate-conscious baker Caroline Saunders developed a brownie recipe around King Arthur’s Climate Blend flour, which features a mix of wheat flours designed to boost resilience and soil health. Because of the wheat varieties used, the blend has a little variability, so the recipe itself is very forgiving.
The U.S. grid added 20 gigawatts of capacity in the first half of 2024, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). That’s a 21% jump compared with the first six months of 2023. The biggest bumps came in the form of solar (59% of the total) and battery storage (21% of the total). The EIA forecasts that the nation is on pace to break its annual record for capacity added in a single year.
The DNC ends tonight in Chicago, and we’ve finally got a glimpse at the party’s platform. The climate pillar focuses on the economic upsides of the energy transition and continued decarbonization. There are no massive surprises here, but rather a series of flexes about the Biden-Harris administration’s record. Probably the most impactful stat, though, comes from a separate report from the nonpartisan business group E2: The Inflation Reduction Act has led to around 330 energy and vehicle projects that could create almost 110,000 jobs—nearly 68% of which are in Republican districts.