During the offseason, I traveled to the Dominican Republic to help clean up trash from a beach with the advocacy group Players for the Planet. It was quite an eye-opening experience, and it convinced me that we need to take more significant steps to cut down on the plastic that often winds up in our oceans. Seeing all that single-use plastic food packaging has inspired me to avoid it in my daily life as much as possible, and to compost waste such as food scraps.

Especially now that China’s not buying recycling from U.S. communities anymore, I believe that compost is the new recycling – the wave of the future – and I’ll be pushing players and fans to take it up this year.

On my trip to the Dominican Republic, we cleaned up about 260 pounds of plastic – including jugs and bottles – and other trash such as Styrofoam and cardboard food containers. I’ve never seen trash like that on a beach.

It was great to team up with guys like Amed Rosario of the New York Mets, Nelson Cruz of the Minnesota Twins and former major league outfielder Chris Dickerson, who co-founded Players for the Planet.

I’ve already changed my behavior based on that trip and a conversation I had soon after with Joshua Spodek on his environmental podcast. After seeing how Styrofoam crumbles but never really breaks down, I will never consciously use that material again. It’s a disaster for the environment. In addition, I’ve been going to the local farmers market more often, bringing my own bags, and basically using no packaging.

And for Christmas, my wife bought be reusable dish rags – we decided we’re never going to use paper towels again. All of that has meant our household is generating a lot less plastic and a lot more soil from our compost pile. We have halved our trash.