Small acts that aren't
Rees Calder · 17 April 2026 · 6 min read
A cotton tote bag needs to be used at least 131 times before it beats a single-use plastic bag on carbon. Most people use theirs a handful of times and lose it.
That number comes from a 2018 Danish Ministry of the Environment study that compared the full lifecycle emissions of fourteen bag types. The reusable cotton tote was worst in nearly every category except littering. The plastic bag, the one we've all agreed to hate, came out reasonably.
This is inconvenient.
It's also the pattern. A lot of what we call "doing something" is theatre. It lets us feel good without changing much. Let's look at three of the most popular ones and what the evidence actually says.
Reusable bags
The Danish study isn't an outlier. The UK Environment Agency ran its own analysis in 2011 and reached similar conclusions. The reusable cotton bag needed 131 uses to match a standard HDPE bag. Organic cotton needed 149. A paper bag needed three.
The deeper problem: reusable bags are only better if you actually reuse them enough. Studies of shopper behaviour in California and Denmark suggest most don't. People own many totes, use each one a few times, and still accept plastic at the till when they forget.
Does this mean plastic is fine? No. It means the bag choice isn't where impact lives. The retailer's supply chain, the food you put in the bag, and whether you drove or walked to the shop all swamp the bag decision by one or two orders of magnitude.
Carbon offsets
In 2023 The Guardian and Die Zeit ran an 18-month investigation with researchers at Cambridge and the Corporate Accountability Institute into the largest rainforest offset provider, Verra. More than 90% of their rainforest offsets were found to be "phantom credits" that didn't represent real carbon reductions.
The problem is structural. Offsets rely on counterfactuals, "this forest would have been cut down if we hadn't paid for it," and counterfactuals are almost impossible to verify at scale. The offset market has grown because it lets companies claim neutrality without changing operations.
Some offsets are better than others. Direct air capture credits, verified improved cookstove programmes in specific geographies, and permanence-tracked reforestation with strong monitoring do represent real reductions. But the cheap offsets you can buy in a dropdown at checkout? Mostly not.
Recycling plastic
Less than 9% of all plastic ever produced has been recycled. That's the OECD's 2022 number. In the US, the rate for plastic waste hovers around 5 to 6%. The remainder is landfilled, incinerated, or exported.
The recycling rate has been roughly flat for decades despite huge consumer and municipal effort. The reason isn't that people aren't trying. It's that the economics of recycling most plastic grades don't work. Virgin plastic is usually cheaper, and most plastic products contain mixes that can't be cleanly separated.
The counterfactual matters here too. Dutifully rinsing yoghurt pots doesn't get you to a better outcome if the pot goes to landfill anyway. And the act of recycling, the feeling of having done something, can license more consumption. Behavioural economists call this the "moral licensing" effect.
What actually moves the needle
Here's the rough hierarchy for personal emissions, from highest-impact to lowest, based on Wynes and Nicholas (2017) in Environmental Research Letters and subsequent meta-analyses:
- Have one fewer child (roughly 58 tonnes CO2e per year, if you count descendants)
- Live car-free (roughly 2.4 tonnes per year)
- Skip one transatlantic flight (roughly 1.6 tonnes)
- Switch to a plant-based diet (roughly 0.8 tonnes)
- Use renewable energy at home (roughly 1.6 tonnes if available)
Reusable bags, recycling, and light bulbs don't appear in the top list because their per-year impact is measured in tens of kilograms, not tonnes.
None of this means stop using your tote. The point is proportionality. Don't let the small things crowd out the big things. And don't let the performance of small things give you permission to skip the big ones.
The one thing worth doing this week
Pick one of these five levers and make it slightly easier for your future self.
If you fly often, book the train for your next trip under six hours. If you eat meat daily, pick three days a week to not. If you've never switched, check whether your energy provider offers a verified renewable tariff.
These aren't heroic. They're just the ones where the numbers are actually on your side.
Sources used: Danish Ministry of the Environment (2018), UK Environment Agency (2011), The Guardian & Die Zeit (2023) investigation into Verra, OECD Global Plastics Outlook (2022), Wynes & Nicholas, Environmental Research Letters (2017). Full links in the planning doc.