If I buy a Tim Horton's coffee on the way to the trail head I bring the used cup with me, and see how long it lasts before I use it for tinder, but I still have my regular mug. I guess I am saying I don't go out of my way to bring that stuff. I like my regular gear to be durable enough to last a month even if I'm only out for a weekend, but once I leave home I am also in 'foraging and scavenging mode', so anything I come across might get grabbed and re-used in some way or another. Same with junk I find in the woods or on beaches, and natural materials also. It's fun. Found some sort of 'bait bag' made out of fishing net and a piece of rubber tire and I used that for keeping small items and garbage in for that trip. Found a balloon washed up on Cradle Brook Beach one January. with a face on it, from some store promotion miles away, so it became my 'Spalding' hiking buddy for that trip.

I do the same in dollar stores and department stores, but I have gotten alot more fussy when it comes to actually buying stuff. I'm trying to get away from plastic as much as possible also, unless its really durable, and I don't already have one. Some free gear is definitely worth it though, like a little container fashioned out of birch bark, and I still have the wedding bottle I got for mixing aqua-mira, which actually came from a wedding I was at. Natural materials are best though, but if something is on its way to a landfill that's fair game also. If you are actually adding to the landfill, that's no good. Even if what you are buying is really durable you should probably think twice if you already have something. The best things in life are free, and some of the best free stuff is the stuff you have already.