I always knew that plastic bags were bad for the environment, that sea turtles mistaken them for jelly fish, but my awareness was really raised by the documentary "Bag it" http://www.bagitmovie.com/

I urge you to watch this great documentary and more importantly to show it to the next generation.

Since we watch this documentary we really limit the amount of plastic we bring inside our home: 

 Plastic has sipped thru every aspects of our life, and can be found in every rooms of your house, packaging, furniture, toiletries ustensils, even our clothing is made of synthetic fibers. Reducing the use of plastic in one's life is not an easy task, you have to prioritize,pick your battles, our world is built with plastic, we cannot get ri of it all, as my children often point out " the car is made with plastic." Yes it is... but at this point in our life we are not ready to get rid of the car. However there is a lot of other places where plastic is not a necessity. Plastic is here to stay and discarding it is not a solution, it is actually part of the problem: there is no safe way of discarding plastic. Recycling it may help, like giving our plastic items  that can still be used to Good Will. People who will buy them used would have bought the same items new and would have upped the plastic production. On one hand we recycle our plasic items and on the other hand we are careful to buy plastic only when there is no other alternative it is a good idea to buy them used ( ebay..here I come.) 

Grocery bags:

Here is a good place to start, we stopped using grocery bags, we now have big bags in the trunk of the car and we used them every time we go shopping, it is also more practical, they are wide and things don't get crushed when packed inside, they hold a lot of things, 6 bags are enough for our big biweekly shopping trip, 6 bags only to transfer from the shopping cart to the car and then from the car to the house, it saves us a lot of time and energy. 

Trash bags:

In the past we used to recycle the shopping bags as trash bags....so now what?

Now we use a small tin trash can that we line with all the junk mail we receive daily, it is really easy and practical The kids take turn to go empty the bin in the outside trash can. It is true that the outside trash can gets dirtier, but the fact that we hardly eat any animal products and the fact that we use a compost bin for the vegetables and fruits scraps really limit the risk of odors. A good hosing once in a while is enough to keep it clean.

All the rest:

Every time you purchase something, just ask yourself if there is a non plastic alternative, mainly when buying toys. Toys are a huge waste of plastic, most children I know have way too many toys and hardly play with them, people feel obligated to buy a ridiculous amount of useless toys to celebrate birthdays and holidays, I know it is harder to find but there are some toys that are plastic free or that contain less plastic than others: board games, musical instruments, costumes, make believe kitchenware, cast metal model cars, video games (plastic but tiny), books, rock collections, puzzles....