goes plastic-free in the pantry
Lynda Hallinan sets out to rid her pantry of single-use plastics.
I’m not a quitter. I refuse to give up on the good things in life. Consequently, you won’t see me banning bacon butties for Veganuary, going sugar-free in September or dieting in Droptober. could calmly embrace the concept of a mindful May but junk-free June doesn’t sound appetising and Dry July is a complete misnomer at our home in the foothills of Auckland’s Hunua Ranges. Winter is so wet here that my gumboots sink ankle-deep into the mud and our neighbour’s ducks have taken up residence in the potholes on our driveway.
I refuse to give up on the good things in life, but what about the bad? When Will McCallum’s new book How to Give Up Plastic (Penguin Life, $32,) arrived in the post this month, I sat down with a mug of mulled wine and read it from cover to cover. (The wine, I hasten to add, was 100 per cent plastic-free. I’ve perfected a lazy housewife’s method that requires nothing more than a bottle of red wine, a jar of homemade marmalade, half a dozen cloves, a cinnamon stick and a sliced orange. Stir and simmer, on low, in your slow-cooker all day.)
How to Give Up Plastic isn’t the least bit preachy. Rather, it’s full of practical tips for seeking out sustainable alternatives for the environmental scourge of our generation: single-use plastics.
In the bathroom, for instance, why wouldn’t you swap from bottles of shower gel back to bars of soap, or use natural loofahs and cotton flannels instead of synthetic sponges and microfibre make-up removal wipes?
Most of us are now keenly aware of the impact of single-use plastic bags on ocean pollution; new research presented to Parliament by Forest & Bird shows the threat to seabirds is greater here than anywhere else in the world, due to the high number of species that only breed in New Zealand waters. But it’s easy to forget that, only a few decades ago, plastic was the exception rather than the norm. When I was a child, plastic shopping bags were so rarely seen in our house that I collected them as treasured keepsakes. When my grandparents came back from a trip to London, I was given a Harrods carrier bag, which I hung up proudly in my wardrobe!
These days, I have a collection of canvas shopping totes stuffed into my car boot. But, while supermarkets encourage customers to take their groceries home in reusable bags, almost everything inside those bags is still plasticwrapped.
In the kitchen, more than anywhere else in our homes, the tide of plastic sometimes feels like a tsunami. Yet, when I was a kid, Mum brought the groceries home in brown paper bags, and the only coffee anyone drank was instant Nescafé from a big jar on the kitchen bench. Baking powder and golden syrup came in tins and everything else was decanted into retro floral storage canisters.
Now that I’m a parent myself, I get an attack of eco-guilt most mornings, as it often looks like there’s more plastic than food in my children’s lunch boxes. Aside from the plastic yoghurt pottles, snack packs and biscuit wrappers, there’s the plastic wrap on their sandwiches and slabs of banana cake. Only the fruit gets a plastic-free tick but, ever since my eldest son lost his two front teeth, he needs a plastic knife to cut it up!
I do at least grow my own vegetables, make jams and bottle fruit, but if I was given a report for plastic use, it’d say “could try harder”.
One place I’m determined to do better is in my pantry, so this month I visited foodie Catherine Bell’s inner-city Auckland home for inspiration. Catherine is a cookbook author, wholesale kitchenware importer and the founder of the Garden to Table scheme, which teaches primary schoolchildren to “grow, harvest and share” fresh food from school gardens.
When Catherine renovated her innercity workingman’s cottage in Parnell, she opted not just for an open-plan kitchen in what was the property’s original stable block, but for open shelving in the scullery, which motivated her to find stylish, sustainable storage options. She recycled all her plastic containers – “they went to the Sallies” – and opted for sturdy Weck glass jars instead.
Despite being a made-from-scratch cook and frequent entertainer, she hasn’t used plastic wrap to cover leftovers for three years. “I have a drawer full of Bee’s Wraps in different sizes instead,” she says.
It helps that her company, Epicure Trading, has an eco-conscious ethos, importing ethically produced cookware and sustainable serving solutions for caterers – birchwood cutlery, willow skewers, bamboo toothpicks and compostable canapé plates – as well as organic cotton food wrap impregnated with beeswax, jojoba oil and tree resin.
Catherine grows all her own herbs in her pocket-handkerchief courtyard garden, and buys fresh fruit and vegetables at the local farmers market.
She composts her food scraps in a Hungry Bin and has ditched plastic bin liners for the ways of old. After sorting her recycling, she wraps any leftover rubbish in newspaper, “just like my mother used to”, and pops it in a cardboard box until refuse collection day.
Indeed, the only flaw in Catherine’s plastic-free plan was the acquisition of an energetic Spoodle puppy, Ted, who took rather a keen interest in the scullery until the bits and bobs on the bottom shelf were packed into Kiwi-made Sistema storage boxes.
You can’t win them all but, for the sake of the planet, a mostly-plastic-free pantry is a small step in the right direction.
“For the sake of the planet, a mostly-plastic-free pantry is a small step in the right direction.”