How Drew Barrymore Practices Sustainability During the Holidays and Beyond

She’s on a mission to use less plastic—and her whole family is in on it.

Drew Barrymore is on a mission. The multi-hyphenate star—you may know her from her hit talk show, The Drew Barrymore Show; from recent series like Santa Clarita Diet; or from her slew of hit movies in the ’90s and 2000s, which includes titles like Never Been Kissed, The Wedding Singer, and Fever Pitch, to name a few—is working to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle, and she’s encouraging everyone from her own family to her fans and followers to do the same.

Barrymore has partnered with Grove Collaborative, a sustainability-oriented company that offers household cleaning products and other essentials, as the brand’s first-ever Global Brand and Sustainability Advocate. Grove has committed to being 100% plastic-free by 2025 with its Beyond Plastic initiative—among other planet-friendly efforts—an endeavor Barrymore is fully on board with.

She’s swapped plant-based floss picks in for plastic floss and soap and shampoo bars in for liquids that come in plastic bottles. “Everything I’m doing is sort of less and less and less plastic,” Barrymore tells Better Homes & Gardens.

And her efforts don’t end with herself: She’s leading by example with her two children, demonstrating a less-plastic lifestyle every day. They’ve noticed the shift and started paying attention to their own plastic consumption, she says.

“That makes me so proud because I don’t think I was thinking that way,” Barrymore says. “Definitely not at their age, and not even in my 20s and 30s.”

In recent years, though, Barrymore has made a concentrated effort to shift her consumption habits and be less wasteful, an endeavor she says Grove has made much easier.

“When I brought Grove into my life, everything fell into place,” she says. “The packaging is so beautiful, and that matters. Everything should get the countertop test: Does it look pretty? Does it spark joy? Does it aesthetically make you think, ‘I could keep it out on the counter?’ ... Grove has that.”

And her efforts don’t end there: Barrymore has also begun prioritizing a different type of gifting with her family during the holiday season—a habit that emphasizes quality time while, not-so-incidentally, cutting back on wastefulness.

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Surprise and Delight, All Year Long

As a mom—and a high-profile celebrity with friends, colleagues, employees, and any number of other people she works with or meets—Barrymore knows the value of a good gift. (And a good thank-you note: Even in this digital age, she says she still has her kids write thank-you notes for birthday presents and other gifts.)

“Sometimes people are going through stuff in their life, or they’ve been helping you with something, and there’s no bad time to show someone that you really care about them or you appreciate what you guys have been doing together,” she says. “I’m definitely more about the 365 approach rather than these important markers.”

Come Christmas and the winter holidays, she says, she gives herself a gifting break.

“I feel like I’m always trying to surprise and delight people all year long, so I get a pass on Christmas,” she says. “I don’t want to get gifts. I don’t go, ‘Give me gifts.’ I don’t give gifts with my kids. I know this probably is shocking and controversial. But I invest in a trip every year for us, and I don’t do the wrapping paper.”

Barrymore’s preference for experiential gifting over physical gifts during the holidays allows her and her family to spend dedicated time together—and cuts back on waste during this wrapping-paper-and-cardboard-box-filled time of year. Plus, she says, she captures the memories for them to enjoy later.

“Let’s just go be off on a wild adventure together,” she says of her plans with her family. “And then I make pictures, and I tend to make little books out of the pictures, and I’m building a library of our experiences. That’s where I choose to invest the time and money.”

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