Proof you don’t need all that plastic

This is the packaging our writer discarded in a week...

THE mound of rubbish before me reaches up to my thigh and is well over a metre wide. It’s made up of a dozen concertinaed bottles (milk, fizzy water, orange juice, shampoo, shower gel...), as well as fruit cartons, swathes of plastic food packaging and bubble wrap from an online parcel.

I am mortified, because this is all the plastic I’ve used in a single week — and I’m pretty pernickety about recycling. It looks like I’ve fed the 5,000 as opposed to a family of five. Only now does it strike me that we shouldn’t be buying so much plastic in the first place.

My sense of shame is timely. According to a study this year, more than eight billion tonnes of plastic have been produced since the Fifties, of which 6.3 billion tonnes has become waste. Almost 80 per cent of that is in landfills or natural environments such as the oceans.

While plastic packaging has revolutionised the way we store and consume food, there is now so much of it that landfills can’t cope. Some of it contains poisonous chemicals, some can take 450 years to break down, and some won’t biodegrade at all.

And then there’s the fact that only a third of plastic packaging is recycled — only about half of the 38.5 million plastic bottles used every day, for example, and only three per cent of the film on ready meals was recycled in 2015.

Most families in the UK are said to throw away 40kg of plastic a year (our week’s haul weighs 1.2kg, so that’s 62.4kg a year from our house alone, never mind school, work and snacks on the go). The results for the natural world are now plain to see: in August, a study by Plymouth University reported that plastic was found in a third of UK-caught fish, including cod, haddock, mackerel and shellfish.

Suitably horrified, I challenge myself not to purchase any products involving plastic — packaging or otherwise — for a whole week. But how achievable is that, these days? In 2009, Rachelle Strauss and her family set themselves the target of filling only one bin of plastic in a year, which required ‘a complete lifestyle change’ that they document on the website zerowasteweek.co.uk.

She says it’s unfeasible to expect everyone to do this — but if you put the time in, you can actually save money. ‘If you are considering everything you buy, it’s likely to be less expensive as you’ll only purchase what you think you need,’ she says.

I do most of my grocery shopping online, but this is a big no-no. ‘You need to look — in person — for things like butter wrapped in paper. Bring your own bags to the greengrocer, and deli counters will often let you use your own containers,’ says Rachelle.

The first item on my list is bread. Commonly wrapped in plastic, I opt instead for local Somerset bakery chain Burns The Bread. ‘We try to use as little plastic as possible,’ says retail support manager Casey Burns. I buy three loaves in paper bags, with each costing 75p more than my usual sliced, though it tastes delicious.

MIlKis my second priority. With three children, aged nine, 11 and 12, we get through at least 16 pints a week. That’s eight plastic bottles, or 416 in a year.

Thankfully, the milk&more delivery service operates milk floats, delivering to 500,000 homes ( milkandmore. And 60 per cent of its milk comes in glass bottles, which you can request specifically — you return them for reuse like the old days.

I’m thrilled to realise it also delivers orange juice in glass bottles, eggs and — most excitingly for a middle-class gin drinker — FeverTree tonic.

The children cannot get their heads around the milk being delivered. ‘ How do I open this thing?,’ nine-year-old lara asks me as she puzzles over a foil lid. Some items prove easier to source without plastic than I had imagined. My local butcher Phil Day is perfectly cheery about me bringing in Tupperware boxes for my purchases.

‘We have a few customers trying to cut down on plastic,’ he says. ‘Just ensure the receptacle is clean, and check in advance in case your butcher isn’t sure about the idea.’ The total for my shopping is £16.58 compared with £18.94 at Ocado.

Encouraged, I head to my nearest town, Frome. ‘ Why don’t we find you a cardboard box?’ suggests the lady in our greengrocers, SK Fruits. I come away with loose tomatoes, potatoes, onions and carrots. I can’t