The footprint is always somewhere

It's basically impossible to have zero impact on your surroundings.

You can minimise, optimise, cull, switch, or divert, but you'll never remove your footprint entirely.

This is utterly fine.

There are some really good, creative examples to look at for this, like The Dirt Company, who I buy laundry detergent from.

They send a 3kg packet of soap, then every 3 orders they include a reply-paid envelope to return the bags for reuse.

One big upside is that it generates far less single-use plastic. Dirt Co washes the returned packets, refills them, and sends them out again.

Some downsides are that the bags are plastic, and instead of me marching to the shop to buy them, they come via a truck... then also go back via a truck.

So sure, Dirt Co haven't reduced their impact to zero entirely, but I don't think that's the goal... Or the point.

To a complete critic, it might look like they're just diverting the issue elsewhere, but that's not how I see it.

Companies like this offer models that others can emulate and build on.

It creates space for folks to dream up new ways of getting normal stuff to normal people, while also working on how to get that footprint as small as possible.

It's an innovative approach that demonstrates oodles of progress and creativity, without being distracted with being perfect.