June 30th 2019

Last year I took a career break. It was amazing. I got to visit Eastern Europe and South America before coming back to the UK for the sunniest summer in years! Whilst I was away, David Attenborough brought out a new series, Blue Planet II which highlighted the effects of plastic pollution on our seas. It totally resonated with me. One of my blog posts from my travels was about the environmental impact of travel and in South America, the amount of waste I encountered astounded me, but it was my return to the UK where I had my worst shock. Living at my parent's house, I was in a village surrounded by fields. Travelling around their local area, I couldn't believe I thought we were better than other countries. The verges along the side of the road were covered in waste, it was just everywhere. It just made me realise that we just can't continue being so careless with our waste.
So I decided to do something about.
It started with small changes at first, I changed from bottles of shampoo to an amazing smelling solid shampoo from Lush, when I returned to London, I bought a set of veggio bags from Lakeland. I was super-excited as it seemed like the flat that I had moved to had a great recyling set up. I was soon disabused of this. So I decided I wasn't going to leave my recycling there, but each week I'd take it to Sainsbury's to their recycling centre. It's been more challenging getting rid of my food waste (I'm talking peelings here, I have antibodies against throwing food away) until I decided to start using another block of flat's bin (!).
And so the story goes. I've gradually made more changes to my lifestyle, some were easy and some not so! But here are a few of them:

1. I started making all my own bread;
2. I gave up my beloved Tassimo for my filter machine with a reusable filter;
3. I only buy loose fruit and veg in the supermarket (this has definitely impacted what I eat);
4. I use tinned fruit in my nutribullet as so little fruit comes without packaging in my supermarket;
5. I shop as much as I can at my lovely little zero waste shop.

But it still didn't feel like enough.

And so I decided that I would take part in Plastic Free July this year. I'd been contemplating going plastic free earlier in the year but didn't feel like I was prepared enough, and then I realised that actually I just have to jump in and do it!

Before starting, I wanted to see how much plastic waste I'd generated over the last couple of weeks (a major hangover last Sunday stopped me going to the recycling centre!).  And well, this was it. The grand total of 6 items.

Now this might not seem like much, but I actually needed to do a big shop today and so herein was my dilemma. I needed to buy things that are in single use plastic, but it seemed like a bit of a cop out given that tomorrow is the start of July! Did I buy everything I needed today, knowing it was still June or actually start the challenge a day early.

I ended up doing a little bit of the former and a lot of the latter.

Here is my shopping trolley...

In it, were three items of single use plastic: The squash, milk and the lid on the tin of yeast. My receipt to prove it:

Tomorrow I'm going to elaborate more on the plastic associated purchases - I'm not going to justify why I bought them, but I will explain it. 

My Sainsbury's shop was preceded by a visit to a relatively new zero waste shop, the aptly named Zéro that has opened in Merton Abbey Mills and I adore it. Today I bought food stuffs, household cleaner and toiletries, but I'm planning posts on all these things plus a special one dedicated solely to my love of this shop so you'll find out more about them later in the month.

Before I go, I did just want to explain what Plastic Free July means to me as there are many ways to interpret it. It definitely doesn't mean not using plastic. My pledge has been to cut down on single use plastic. I will still use my plastic tubs for my lunches, but I use them over and over again. I still use a wide bore straw for my nutribullet in a morning, but this is only the second one I've been using since September last year - I wash it and reuse it, day after day after day. It's plastic you see, so it doesn't degrade. But I've given up Haribo (anyone who knows me knows this is HUGE), and I've pretty much stopped eating crisps (will be stopping in July for sure) and I love savoury snacks so this is a major challenge.

I would like to note, that I am fully aware of the contradictions in this post when it comes to being more environmentally friendly and some of the activities and experiences in my life that I have mentioned so far definitely don't support that aim. Please bear with me, I'm planning to go into more detail about the changes that I'm making generally in my life throughout the blog to tackle this, not just the #plasticfreejuly ones. 

And so now, with 2 hours and 35 minutes (as I write this) to go until July starts, I am feeling both excited and apprehensive. I fully anticipate there will be times when there will be something I really need that will only be available in single use plastic. Hopefully that won't happen too often! And I'll no doubt fall down, but I won't stop. I don't want to change anyone else's habits, that's up to them. But I do hope that my friends will help me. I ask that you don't mock me for my choices, if I falter, please commiserate with me and support me as I pick myself up and keep going. Maybe what I learn this month might help others to make a few small changes, and if lots of people make a few small changes, well that's potentially something huge! And if not, well then I'll still be doing my bit.