My plastic free crusade and how everyone can join in
by LOUISE ATKINSON, who has cut her family’s waste by 750kg — enough to fill a double garage
AYEAR ago, my life was infused with plastic — like most people’s. From my mobile phone to my mascara wand, from the soles of my shoes to my hair clips, from the pens that littered my desk to the plastic keyboard on which I type, it filled much of my car, kitchen drawers, bathroom cabinets and more.
Then, I was asked to take part in this paper’s campaign against plastic.
Spurred on by the images of plasticchoked seas in David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II series, we embarked on a mission to help every reader reduce their consumption of plastic with simple steps.
To start with, I knew absolutely nothing about plastic or recycling and I admit that environmental awareness ran low on my ‘to-do’ list. But saddened by the images of oceans being turned into a toxic plastic soup, I vowed to give it my best shot.
I had misgivings. Would cutting back on plastic require me to adopt full eco-warrior mode, forcing the family to go vegan and shunning gas-guzzling foreign holidays?
Would I be scrubbing the kitchen floor with vinegar or bicarb rather than supermarket sprays, and going ‘au naturel’ with my body hair, the better to streamline all the plastic bottles cluttering my kitchen and bathroom?
The more I read, the more impossible it seemed to pick plastic out of the mix. Yes, you might carry your plastic water bottle around for a few weeks, refilling it from the tap, but what about those toxic plastic residues leaching into the water?
And would driving the car an extra few miles to a shop with a plastic-free aisle be considered an unnecessary waste of fossil fuels? And should I prioritise the unwrapped avocado from Mexico over the plastic-swathed one from southern Europe?
A weekly supermarket shop is stressful enough already, when it requires the typical working mum (me) to sprint around in under an hour, making on-the-hoof decisions about family meals, while keeping an eye on budget and nutrition. (Five-aday? Wholegrain or white?) Must I now marinade in a heavy dose of environmentalism, too?
I was concerned the only true path to plastic redemption would be one of muddy brown food, organic cotton smocks and rope-soled shoes — all while wearing the furrowed brow of a woman frozen at the check-out trying to compare the air miles travelled by the unwrapped avocados vs the plastic-wrapped ones.
But here’s what I found out . . .
FAMILY RESISTANCE
THIS time last year, I took on the first steps to plastic reduction: refusing plastic bags (and always carrying my own), refilling a metal water bottle instead of buying plastic, carrying a re-usable coffee cup, saying ‘no’ to straws and stirrers, choosing unwrapped fruit and vegetables where possible and switching to a daily milk delivery in re-usable glass bottles.
I discovered the growing sense of satisfaction is addictive, but however much you do achieve, there’s always more. I set myself a mission to see how far I could go without being forcedto make dramatic eco lifestyle changes I knew would embarrass my children. My boys (aged 16 and 18) still squirm at the idea of someone else’s body hair on the bath soap, but I put my foot down (after all, it was good enough for me as a child) and there’s now sweet-smelling solid soap at every sink and shower in our house. Bonus: it turns out a bar of soap lasts far longer than the liquid variety. My daughter, 21, was persuaded to switch her disposable razors for waxing, but refuses to be wrestled from her toxic, unrecycleable make-up removing wipes. I’m working on her. My persistent plastic-nagging is the background hum of our lives now. The kids find me faintly cringemaking, especially when I stop the car to pick up the remains of someone’s takeaway littering the verge, but the message is getting through. There’s less eye-rolling when I pore over the bins, switching items from rubbish to recycling (and vice-versa) and washing food out of tins and containers. Now they’ve started tagging me on the plastic-free clips that crop up on their social media feeds, and sometimes ‘like’ my Instagram photos of dog-plogging (picking up litter on a dog walk). My 18-year-old even rang from university last week to tell me his flat won the hall’s monthly recycling prize (a plastic tub of sweets!). I have to admit my husband Jon, 54, is not exactly particularly happy about the various soggy bars
soap swimming around the bottom of the shower (one for body, one for shampoo, one for conditioner, one as a scrub) and was initially suspicious of my foray into ‘natural’ cleaning products.
There’s quite a chasm between the lemon juice and bicarb concoctions recommended by the environmentally extreme and the great glugs of thick bleach he likes to use to nuke our household germs.
But we’ve found an acceptable middle ground in the form of concentrated refills of household cleaning agents which we can drop into our old plastic trigger bottles and top up with water
(ocean-saver.com and splosh.com). To my amazement he brought home a wooden washing-up brush, plus replaceable heads, and he loves the fact I use prettily packaged plastic-free loo rolls (from whogivesacrap.org).
KETCHUP CHALLENGE
PLASTIC bags drive me to distraction. I refuse them even when buying clothes and shudder at the thought of pulling a flimsy bag off the roll at the supermarket (using reusable fruit and veg bags instead).
So it saddens me that the contents of our supermarket trolley are still depressingly shiny: salad, pasta, hummus, coleslaw, scones, bacon, fishcakes . . . the list of items packaged in plastic is endless.
There doesn’t seem much I can do about the weekly freezer staples of pizza (though I try to pick a brand which sits on cardboard rather than unrecyclable polystyrene), peas and oven chips.
It makes me angry that our local authority (like most) can’t or won’t accept flimsy plastic in the recycling. The wrapping might say ‘recyclable’, but in reality your options are very limited.
I’m not militant enough (yet) to unwrap my shopping and leave the bags at the till, but a few larger branches of Tesco now have hoppers in their entrance halls for the swathes of flimsy plastic that come with any food shop. It’s annoying and inconvenient to have to make a special journey there, burning fossil fuels just to ensure those plastic bags stay out of landfill — and having researched the recycling situation I’m not convinced they always do.
Yes, I might get a small thrill of virtuous satisfaction every time I drop off my plastic bundle, but I need a bit of credit in the plastic bank to offset the recommended reduction moves that have so far stumped me.
Take the recycled paper compost bags sold to hold food waste — it turns out they dissolve into mulch when moist, splitting and scattering potato peelings and tea bags all over the floor.
Neither can I get on with the cling-wrap substitute — the nicely patterned beeswax-infused cloth which is supposed to cling to the sides of a bowl and keep food airtight and fresh.
I buy eggs on cardboard trays, butter in paper, and we fizz our tap water in the SodaStream (no more plastic water bottles), but my kids insist squeezable ketchup in a plastic bottle rather than glass is ‘progress’ that should not be denied. Other areas I’m slightly ashamed of: we still use coffee pods (recyclable ones, obviously), and although I’ve tried toothpaste in a glass jar
(georganics.co.uk), I haven’t found a sensitive version.
I’m also still adhering to my dentist’s advice to use an electric toothbrush (rather than a trendy bamboo one). And I find plastic inter-dental brushes more effective than a wooden tooth pick or silk floss.
But one step at a time, and these are now on my resolutions list to tackle in 2019. EXPENSE IS WORTH IT THOUGH going plastic-free means there are some cost savings (notably, by shunning bottled water, embracing ‘hard’ soap, and enjoying a discount every time I buy takeaway coffee in my reusable cup), this quest can be expensive.
A pint of milk delivered to the door costs slightly less than buying it from the supermarket, and the delicious yoghurt my milkman now brings in a glass jar costs €3.30 for 500g, compared to 75c for the plastic-packed version.
I’ve saved money by avoiding liquid soap and buying hair products which turned out to last far longer than their plastic-packaged predecessors, but it was a shock to find my trip to a bulk order shop cost five times more.
A few paper bags of store-cupboard staples plus a box of plastic-free dishwasher tablets came to €27, when the total bill would have been €7 at Aldi.
But, mostly, I’m proud to be doing my bit. You don’t have to be a full-on eco-warrior to make a difference.
I’ve discovered there is a less contentious route to plastic vigilance that allows you to trim excess plastic in many areas of your life, without much sacrifice in comfort or style.
Meghan Markle might have been spotted wearing Rothy’s shoes made from recycled plastic water bottles (€125 a pair) on her trip to Australia, but I don’t for a minute imagine she wipes over her counter tops with malt vinegar and bicarb, or rinses and re-uses old plastic bags to wrap Harry’s sandwiches.
Yet she’s still doing her bit, too.
And when I look back over this year and add up the volumes of plastic that I no longer use, the figure is actually pretty impressive. The statistics show that a heavy user of plastic — ploughing through a water bottle a day, takeaway drinks and containers, liquid soaps, traditional plasticpacked detergents and beauty products, shopping bags, ready meals (think of the plastic trays) — might throw out more than 190kg of plastic waste each year, enough to fill a bathroom.
I reckon I’ve now reduced my annual plastic waste pile to a more manageable 47kg (the size of phone box).
If everyone took a few extra steps to reduce their plastic consumption, that could be a 150kg of plastic trash saved from landfill, incineration or the sea per person, per year.
For a family of five, that could be 750kg plastic saved — enough to fill a double garage.
It’s a thought which, despite the effort and sometimes challenges of the past year, keeps me continually looking for new ways to avoid plastic.
If everyone makes one change, then adds another, and perhaps inspires a loved one to follow suit, we can effect positive change — one plastic bottle at a time!