Avoiding plastics at the household level: Household agency as a mechanism in transitions

• Plastic avoidance at the household level is a social innovation that involves effort and creative adaptation. • Householders can exercise agency to generate change through social innovation. • Plastic avoidance involves mental, spatial and social actions as well as material actions. • Easing the burden of mental, spatial, social and material actions can support household-level innovation adoption to progress sustainability transitions. • Households can play a key role in diffusing social innovation to progress sustainability transitions. This article provides a perspective on concrete sustainability actions to avoid plastic at the household level in Australia to examine the contributions and involvement of household-level agency and social innovation in socio-technical systems transitions. Asking ‘what can household-level actions for sustainability reveal about the position of household agency in sustainability transitions?’ investigates links between household and systems change. Plastic avoidance involves four types of action: mental, material, social and spatial, which capture how householders' agency creatively adapt and diffuse social innovations, revealing a powerful mechanism in sustainability transitions driven by effort rather than novel technologies. In addition, the entanglement of material actions with creativity and mental, spatial and social actions highlight dynamics and potential barriers to innovation adoption as part of transition pathways. The case and the four categories of action presented offer a starting point to identify and minimise such barriers in designing pathways for change and implementing transitions.