In episode 9 of the Outdoor Minimalist podcast, we will be discussing a hot topic in any part of the sustainability and zero-waste movement:
single-use plastics.
More specifically, we will be discussing the use of plastics on the production side of packaging with some limited discussion regarding consumer use of single-use plastics.
To help me expand on this topic, I had the pleasure of talking to Steven Reinhold.
Steven has worked within the outdoor industry for over a decade. He began his outdoor career with Big City Mountaineers’ Summit for Someone program where he guided and recruited fundraising climbers whose efforts supported BCM’s wilderness-mentoring programs. Steven has been an ambassador for multiple outdoor brands and currently serves as Backpacker Magazine’s official Brand Ambassador.
He created the online sensation #trashtag, a social media-based cleanup effort, which went viral in 2019 and has been used over 100 million times worldwide! Steven also founded The Appalachian Adventure Company, which has strong guiding-roots, but has since grown into a formidable Media/Marketing/Consulting company which works closely with organizations like Black Folks Camp Too, Leave No Trace, and the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Steven Reinhold: https://www.instagram.com/ramblin_reinhold/
APPALACHIAN ADVENTURE COMPANY: https://www.facebook.com/AppalachianAdventureCompany/
BLACK FOLKS CAMP TOO: https://www.instagram.com/blackfolkscamptoo/
Plastic Impact Alliance: https://www.outsidebusinessjournal.com/tag/plastic-impact-alliance/
Join the Plastic Impact Alliance: https://www.outsidebusinessjournal.com/issues/sustainability/packaging/how-to-join-plastic-impact-alliance/
This transcript was edited to remove some filler words and phrases and is not verbatim according to what is spoken in the audio recording.
MEG: Thank you for joining me on the podcast today, Steven. I’ve been looking forward to connecting again and discussing single-use plastics.
Before we dive in, can you share a bit more about how you got involved in outdoor recreation, your role in the outdoor industry, and why single-use plastic waste has become such an important issue for you?
STEVEN: Yeah, for sure! Thanks for having me. As you mentioned, my name is Steven Reinhold, and I’ve worked in the outdoor industry for a little over a decade now. I began my career with Big City Mountaineers, helping to recruit and fundraise for their Summit for Someone program, which raised money for wilderness mentoring trips for inner-city kids. Since then, I’ve had various roles in the outdoor industry.
I started my own guiding company in North Carolina called the Appalachian Adventure Company. That company has since transitioned more into a media and marketing consulting group, working with various organizations.
One thing I’m particularly known for is starting the #TrashTag cleanup initiative a few years ago. It’s a social media cleanup effort where I encouraged people to pick up trash and post pictures of their efforts. It went viral in 2019 and garnered a lot of attention, thanks to the hard work of many individuals.
This leads into why I’m here today—my interest in waste created within the outdoor industry, especially single-use plastics. I’ve always been a fan of the environment and outdoor recreation, and it’s great to finally blend those two passions together.
MEG: That’s really interesting! Could you explain a bit more about the #TrashTag challenge, how people can get involved, and what it entails?
STEVEN: Absolutely! In 2016, I was on a road trip from North Carolina to California. During the trip, I accidentally littered a receipt from a gear store out of my window, which devastated me.
To atone for that, I pledged to pick up a hundred pieces of trash.
As I continued my road trip, visiting national parks in California, Idaho, and Wyoming, I noticed trash in these beautiful locations—granola wrappers and other litter even in the backcountry. It struck me how pervasive our trash problem is, which kind of ruined the outdoor experience for me. I wanted to shift the tides a bit.
By the time I reached my hundredth piece of trash in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I had the idea for #TrashTag. It’s a simple concept; I changed two letters from "hashtag" to create "trash tag."
The idea was to encourage others to pick up trash during their adventures and post it on social media to inspire their friends and followers to do the same. I partnered with an outdoor gear company, UCO Gear, and set a goal to pick up 10,000 pieces of trash. We ended up collecting about 30,000 pieces in the first couple of years.
In 2019, a man named Byron Roman in Arizona posted about a young gentleman from Algeria who had picked up trash, and that post went viral. The #TrashTag challenge spread worldwide, far beyond what I had imagined.
Initially, I thought it would be incredible to get a million people involved, but estimates suggest there have been over 100 million uses of #TrashTag globally. It’s a gateway to conservation; the simplest action—picking up a piece of trash and posting it—can lead to more sustainable practices and inspire others.
MEG: I love that it’s a positive use of social media and serves as a gateway to other sustainable practices. It can even spark conversations when you're out hiking or when your followers see your posts.
STEVEN: Fore sure! Many people have told me, “Oh, that’s great! I already pick up trash.” And I think that’s amazing. There are so many people out there doing this. #TrashTag connects us all and inspires others. It’s a positive movement in a time when social media can often feel negative. It’s a powerful tool for connection and conservation.
MEG: Would you say that was your launching point into merging sustainable practices with the outdoor industry, or when did that begin for you?
STEVEN: Yes, certainly. That was definitely the launching point for that. Like I mentioned, I've been an athlete ambassador for a few different companies, and that's absolutely wonderful.
But I think the outdoor industry, in particular, seems to really care about the planet. I know we have a lot of issues, a lot of waste issues—single-use plastics and just the materials we use for our gear in general. We've got a big problem with that, but it seems to be an industry that truly cares. That’s what always drew me to the outdoor industry; I've always been a passionate person wanting to pursue passionate endeavors.
It’s been wonderful to work with organizations like Leave No Trace and National Cleanup Day, and to find all these different organizations out there. #TrashTag is just a simple way to connect everybody through that.
I did not reinvent the wheel; I literally only changed two letters from "hashtag," so everyone can recognize it. It’s translated pretty much across all languages, and I think that's one of the reasons it's been so well received and widespread.
MEG: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think you're right that in the outdoor community, there are a lot of people who care and feel galvanized towards sustainability and environmental change.
But obviously, there is still some work to do, which is why you have to pick up trash sometimes when you're out hiking or paddling, whatever you're doing.
For this conversation, I don't necessarily want to focus on consumer waste. I think it would be interesting to talk a little more about what you know regarding single-use plastics in manufacturing and that waste in the outdoor industry, because that's often very separate from the consumer side.
STEVEN: For sure. You know, it’s interesting—it's something that the consumer doesn't see very much; it’s not forward-facing. Essentially, every piece of gear you've ever bought was packaged in a single-use poly bag.
If you get those items delivered online, they’re going to come in that very thin plastic bag. Even if you shop at a retail store, they received those pieces of gear in a very thin poly bag. That, in particular, is a huge problem.
You think about the strange juxtaposition: this gear is made to withstand everything you’re going to throw at it—rock climbing, dirt, whatever—but for some reason, it has to be shipped in a thin poly bag that's very difficult to recycle. Up until recently, it wasn't even an option. That was one of those dirty things pushed to the side.
I remember seeing a picture from a company named Prana. They had received a huge shipment at one of their stores, stocked everything, and sent a picture to their higher-ups, asking, “What do you expect us to do with all this plastic?”
It was a poignant moment—like a ten-foot-high pile of plastic in the back of the store, with employees wondering what they could do with it.
Imagine the size of the outdoor industry; we're approaching a trillion-dollar industry. There are hundreds of millions of people worldwide who are into the adventure and outdoor lifestyle. Think about how many billions, if not trillions, of these poly bags have been created through our desire to go on adventures. It’s a strange juxtaposition of an industry that prides itself on being eco-friendly.
Everyone's always bragging about their initiatives and how they're trying to be more eco-friendly, yet we have this looming but untold problem in the background with these poly bags.
One of the neat things I really like to talk about is that a few years ago, in 2019, my good friend Kristen Hostetter started something called the Plastic Impact Alliance with her company, the Outside Business Journal.
The Plastic Impact Alliance started as a way to get organizations not to use any single-use plastics at the 2019 Outdoor Retailer show. There was always a problem of using plastic water bottles, straws, and all items coming in those poly bags. She got together and started a coalition with just a few companies. They pledged, signed this Plastic Impact Promise, and decided not to use any single-use plastics at this trade show.
The idea took off, and the realization of our problems came together. Now, it’s a coalition of over 420 organizations and companies that have pledged to reduce or eliminate single-use plastic from their entire corporation. I think that's amazing!
It’s a great way to show the power of positivity and how connected we are in this industry. For example, within that Plastic Impact Alliance, organizations like Prana are committed to completely eliminating single-use plastics from their entire company. They share that information with other companies, and everyone can feed off that energy and ideas.
They have a super cool program right now in Boulder, Colorado, on Pearl Street. If you're familiar with Boulder, Pearl Street is kind of like the outdoor mall with all the cool outdoorsy shops—Patagonia, Himalaya Steel, all the staples.
They’ve started a program called the Eco-Cycle, where they collect all the poly bags from these ten different organizations on Pearl Street. They take them to Outside Inc., the media owner of Outside Business Journal, which helped start the Plastic Impact Alliance. This Eco-Cycle company is recycling the poly bags and turning them into Trex decking, which is an alternative to wood decking for your house. That’s a super cool initiative!
They’re able to measure how many poly bags they collect and create a model that can be scaled and replicated in other areas. They’re raising awareness about the amount of poly bags in the merchandise stream within the outdoor industry.
It’s important because up until a couple of years ago, before I joined the Plastic Impact Alliance with my company, the Appalachian Adventure Company, that never occurred to me. I would order a Patagonia jacket that was environmentally friendly, made from recycled material, dyed properly, all these things, but then it would come in a plastic bag that I would discard, even though it said "recyclable," because I knew there was nowhere around here that recycled it.
Those plastic bags can wreak havoc within the recycling stream because they damage machinery. That thought never occurred to me; it was out of sight, out of mind. But now that I think about it, there are billions, if not trillions, of these poly bags that jackets, backpacks, sleeping bags, and tents have come in over the years. It’s hard to stomach, especially from an industry that prides itself on being environmentally friendly and on protecting the places where we play.
It’s important for me to help bring that to light because, so many times, forward-facing, the outdoor industry focuses on protecting public lands.
But it doesn’t do much good to protect Yosemite while destroying Vietnam through our consumption, or whatever other country you want to insert that produces and manufactures many of the hard goods for the outdoor industry.
It needs to be viewed not just from a land conservation standpoint but from our entire impact.
Honestly, that’s one of the reasons I’m so excited that you started the Outdoor Minimalist mindset and theory behind that. I mean, that impact could translate to so many things.
Think about boiling bag meals—those dehydrated meals that come in Mylar bags that last essentially forever. If you go on a three-night backpacking trip and eat ten meals out of those bags, there are ten pieces of trash that will be around indefinitely—long past your lifetime. That impact you create just to enjoy the outdoors is significant. It’s easy to be out of sight, out of mind and assume that it’s just part of the experience.
I find it interesting to think about the possibility of a zero-impact backpacking trip.
MEG: Yeah, there's a lot to unpack in everything you just said.
STEVEN: Sorry I rambled; my nickname is Ramblin’ Reinhold, as you can tell!
MEG: Oh, brilliant! That is such a good nickname.
I kind of want to reel it in for a second. There’s a lot of validity to everything you’re saying. One thing sticking out to me is the out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality. When we’re talking about any type of consumer good or plastic, anything labeled as recyclable often leads consumers to believe they can recycle it. However, many aren’t aware that poly bags can’t be recycled in the facilities they’d send them to. This initiative kind of removes that.
I’m wondering, because I did some research with the Plastic Impact Alliance, does it seem easier to remove direct-to-consumer packaging compared to the manufacturer packaging?
STEVEN: Yeah, for sure. I think that's certainly part of the Alliance. It’s a way to create this coalition and figure out ways to reduce it at all steps. Reducing it from the manufacturer is key. Several companies have removed those poly bags from their packaging to consumers. They’ve switched to things like rolling t-shirts and tying them with twine or using more easily recycled craft paper.
Prana, in particular, introduced a product called glassine paper, which is a more easily recycled, weatherproof type of paper bag.
But, like you said, there’s a lot to unpack there. Even the impact of getting something shipped versus buying it from your local gear store is significant. To me, if you’re trying, you’re winning. It’s virtually impossible to leave no trace completely, but if you’re trying to analyze and reduce your impact, you’re making progress.
MEG: That’s why I struggle with the terminology of “zero waste.” Really, all we can do is minimize our waste or impact, and that’s what this Alliance appears to be doing.
Other than the poly bags, which are a large issue even outside of the outdoor industry, are there other types of plastic they’re focusing on or trying to remove?
STEVEN: For sure! The heart of it was to reduce single-use plastics at retail shows in the outdoor industry. For those familiar with outdoor industry history, several shows occur per year; one main one is the Outdoor Retailer show, which has moved to Denver. At those trade shows, people would get plastic water bottles, use plastic cups for happy hours—little things that add up.
The original theory was to eliminate these single-use plastics from Outdoor Retailer and other retail shows. Companies within the Alliance now host water refill stations and provide affordable reusable water bottles. That’s cool because it’s forward-facing. You see the Plastic Impact Alliance logo, and it lets you know that people are attempting to tackle this issue.
It may seem like a small contribution, but it encourages everyone to consider what they can do to help remove plastic, especially single-use plastic. As you can tell, based on the Trash Tag project, I’m really big on inspiring others to act on their behalf. I always tell people to dream big. Their ideas for eliminating waste might be thousands of times more complex than my simple idea of just removing a poly bag.
That’s really the biggest thing: getting people through the gateway to join the team that’s trying to reduce waste on the front end.
MEG: Oftentimes, it can feel hopeless as an individual trying to make changes in today’s era of sustainability and environmental chaos. But that conversation piece is really important.
It seems like this new alliance forming in the outdoor industry is effective and serves as a good conversation starter for people in the industry to critically examine the small items that pile up and make easier changes instead of having to change everything all at once. It builds on itself.
STEVEN: Absolutely! These small innovations really make a difference. For example, Evergreen Adventure Foods is using 100% biodegradable bags for their dehydrated meals. They’ve developed a technology that keeps the food fresh while ensuring the bags break down naturally. This is a significant step towards eliminating their environmental impact.
Another exciting example is a company that makes NOSO patches, allowing people to repair their gear—like tents and jackets—in a stylish way. This encourages a mindset shift from needing brand-new items to taking pride in well-loved, repaired gear.
The outdoor industry, being a trendsetter, influences how people view these changes. When companies make eco-friendly moves, it creates a trickle-down effect that encourages others to follow suit.
MEG: It sounds like the Plastic Impact Alliance is crucial, especially since larger companies like Patagonia are paving the way for smaller brands to adopt sustainable practices. They can market eco-friendly products more effectively, which is beneficial for everyone.
STEVEN: Definitely! There are so many resources out there for smaller companies looking to innovate. A notable one is Rerouted, a Colorado-based group that connects people wanting to sell their used gear. This promotes a circular economy and adds value to gear with history.
Larger companies like Repreve and Recover Brands are making recycled fabrics from plastics, which more brands are using. Consumers are increasingly demanding eco-friendly products, driving companies to respond. It’s all about voting with your dollar—making informed choices can lead to significant impacts.
MEG: Buying used or renting gear is a great way to skip single-use plastics and reduce the demand for new materials.
STEVEN: Exactly! The outdoor industry often encourages people to buy the latest gear, which contributes to waste. But simple camping essentials can be all you really need. There’s a lot of gear sitting unused in closets—like tents and sleeping bags—because people often buy more than they need.
In the Overland community, for instance, there’s a trend to overpack vehicles with gear for Instagram-worthy adventures, which can create a significant environmental impact.
MEG: It’s fascinating how different sectors handle waste and marketing.
STEVEN: Yes! Even in the RV industry, products are often designed not to last. Companies like Limer Boots are changing that by creating durable products that can last decades. Repairability and education on maintenance are crucial for sustainability.
MEG: Thanks for sharing these insights! How can listeners find you and your work?
STEVEN: You can find me on Instagram @ramblin_reinhold and the Appalachian Adventure Company as well.
MEG: Great! I’ll link those and the Plastic Impact Alliance in the episode notes. Thanks for the chat, Stephen!
STEVEN: Thank you! I appreciate what you’re doing with Outdoor Minimalist.
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