Blog
Reuse Rising Newsletter: Summer 2026
Reuse Rising: Building the movement We know our Community is ready to ditch throwaway culture. So, we’re training volunteers, building community power, and boosting the reuse movement for a cultural shift. This quarterly newsletter is a nod to the inspiring and impactful work of Reuse Changemakers across the U.S. and includes action you can take…
What Type of Changemaker are You?
From creating art, to writing to your representatives, to hosting a nonfiction book club, to investigating corporate corruption, to rallying at a protest, there are all kinds of ways to get involved and make change! Everyone is unique in the ways that they make an impact. We each have our own interests, skills and personality…
2025 Impact from Our Grassroots Grants Program
Grassroots Power, Real Change January 2026 Since 2017, The Story of Stuff Project’s Grassroots Grants Program has invested in one simple but powerful idea: lasting environmental change is built from the ground up. Across the United States, small, community-based organizations are leading the fight against plastic pollution, water privatization, and extractive systems that harm people…
Launching a Reuse Revolution: Our Latest DocuSeries
In 2026, we’re launching The Reuse Revolution, a new mini-documentary series spotlighting the emerging solutions and bold innovators tackling the plastics and waste crises through reuse systems. This series showcases business, public initiatives and community leaders planting the seeds for a reusable future. While some of the initiatives are in their nascent phase, they are…
McDonald’s Doubles Down on Opposition to Reusable Packaging Despite Support from Its Shareholders
A New report, intended to commit to new measures to reduce plastic and disposable packaging, draws on its own flawed practices to forecast a ‘worst-case scenario’ for reusable packaging. In October 2025, McDonald’s released a report, ‘The Complex Reality of Reusable Packaging in Europe’, stating its position on reusable packaging based on an analysis of…
More Joy, Less Junk
Do you think life seems more meaningful when we step away from throwaway, consumption-crazed culture? A recent New York Times piece, Throwaway Plastic Has Corrupted Us, got me thinking. Cheap, versatile plastics made throwaway culture explode, fueling overconsumption and turbocharging corporate profits… The social costs of our addiction to disposable plastics are… subtle but significant. Cooking…
Building a Pathway towards a Refillable Beverage System in California
Groundbreaking New Report Integrating Reuse Into California’s Beverage Container Deposit System: A Feasibility Study The Story of Stuff Project commissioned Eunomia Consulting to investigate how the state of California might create a system for converting a quarter of the state’s 28 billion beverages sold annually, to reusable containers alongside the benefits of doing so. The…
Governor Newsom: Don’t Back Down
Implement California’s Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act Without Delay Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 54 in 2022 – the nation’s most far-reaching plastic reduction law – pledging to “hold polluters responsible” and “cut plastics at the source.” But now his office is being targeted by industry lobbyists to delay the law’s…
Story of Stuff Community Newsletter: July – September 2024
Global Citizens or Mass Consumers? With the holidays around the corner, we can expect an uptick in the same tired messaging that tells us to buy more and more Stuff – because apparently that’s the only way to participate in what really matters to us. But, as a friend of Story of Stuff, we’re guessing…
