31st July 2019

31^st July. Last day of the month. Scary how quickly they go isn’t it. Doing plastic free July hasn’t slowed it down at all and isn’t that usually the case when you don’t enjoy something? Which must meant there was something to it that I liked. Actually there was a lot that I liked, some things I was pretty ambivalent about and some things that I didn’t like at all. Fortunately though it was a mostly positive experience!

I’ve been working towards being – if not plastic free – as low a plastic user as possible for quite some time now and so I had already made a lot of changes. Just to qualify here – I’m talking single-use plastic, not multi. There’s the standard changes of having a reusable cup and taking my own bag to the supermarket, that sort of thing, but I really wanted to use this month to explore the additional things that I could do to make the difference. It’s been mainly the kitchen and bathroom that needed tackling. The kitchen I’ve managed to cut down drastically but it’s not been easy and I actually will end up relenting on this one as I am struggling with the omission of some things through being plastic free. Food wise, many things I’ve managed to make myself so I don’t have to buy plastic wrapped produce but in the making there are challenges. For example, buying butter/margarine not in plastic is virtually impossible. I’d had some stork hard marg in the fridge (bought pre-July) as that’s my preferred brand for making pastry and when I was finished I deconstructed the wrapper. Turns out it was a layer of foil (recyclable), a layer of paper (recyclable) and a layer of plastic (not recyclable) so if you’re thinking about throwing foil butter wrappers in the recycling, think again as they have plastic in them. I miss yogurt and as it’s not possible for me to have doorstep deliveries (I live in a block of flats) so I can’t get milk or cream in glass bottles delivered and therefore make my own butter or yogurt plastic free. I may have to relent and buy yogurt (I can happily manage without milk). I’m yet to have any stone fruits that aren’t out of a tin, and neither have I had any berries, other than the delicious strawberries that my Dad brought me from his garden as I’m yet to see any that aren’t in plastic tubs. I am planning to go out picking blackberries this weekend as there are loads along the River Wandle near my house so that’s both plastic free and actually free too! Otherwise, it’s cheese that’s the challenge but it’s just a case of needing to get my ass into gear and getting to a cheese shop that will solve that.

Other than stain remover for clothes and fairy liquid, my kitchen and bathroom cleaning regime has become completely plastic free. I’m finishing off a bottle of fairy liquid at the moment and then will be able to reuse the bottle at my Zero waste shop. I’m not sure about the stain remover, maybe I just need to get better at not dropping my food down me when I eat? Otherwise, it’s all refilled at the zero waste shop and I’ve become a fan of the white wine vinegar homemade cleaner which gets rid of lime scale a treat! 50:50, vinegar to water, piece of lemon zest and sprig of rosemary – sorted! There are other variations on this including bicarbonate of soda that I need to investigate too but for now this keeps my shower screen beautifully sparkling and my toilet too! For kitchen cleaning, I use a combination of this and some all-purpose cleaner from the zero waste shop that also gets diluted so lasts ages.

For the bathroom, the shower gel has gone in favour of soap and I’m now using natural deodorant in a cardboard tube and to be honest, that’s pretty much all I’ve managed when I think about it. I had already changed to solid shampoo but none of my other toiletries have run out over the month. I have just had a delivery of a rose perfume from Eden, a company who don’t wrap in plastic and I can get the bottle refilled which is great for reducing waste. It’s not quite the scent I was after but I think I’ll be able to get used to it. I’m not sure I can give up femfresh or Bioderma serum though. I also love my leave in conditioner, body lotion, Bioderma micellar water and Nivea eye makeup remover (although I hardly ever wear makeup these days to need it). These are all things that I’ll need to ponder on and figure out.

The one thing that were an absolute fail for me were the dentabs. I just don’t get on with them at all. I do think they were great when travelling but on a daily basis I’m really not convinced. My teeth were starting to go yellow using them. Not good. Unfortunately they’re the only brand of plastic free toothpaste that I’ve found which has fluoride in it and whilst I know all the arguments against fluoride, I’m of that generation where it was in the water when I was growing up and I have really good teeth. So whilst I also know there are many factors contributing to this, personally, I want fluoride in my toothpaste. It turns out, I had a tube of toothpaste in my bathroom cabinet that I hadn’t realised. I did end up opening this and as it takes me a really long time to get through a tube of toothpaste, I have more time to investigate this.

For me, the best find of the month was the deodorant. It’s taking my skin a while to get used to it, and every so often I still get red skin around my armpits (sorry Mum, you have to use this word talking about deodorant), this was far and away my most amazing discovery. I’ve always used heavy duty deodorant and it doesn’t always work, but this, this was incredible. I had one day where I didn’t use quite as much as I had been doing that I could detect the beginning of odour, but otherwise, even on the hottest days, whilst I did still sweat, I was completely odour free. I genuinely didn’t expect this. The brand I bought was Earth Conscious, Rose and Jasmine. It’s not cheap at £6.99 a tube but I’m guessing it will last around as long as a regular stick deodorant and is an expense I’m happy to increase.

The most challenging aspect of the month turned out to be lunch or eating on the go more generally. Usually I take my lunch into work so it’s not a problem, but occasionally for one reason or another, this didn’t work out. Buying a plastic free take out lunch was sooooo hard. I bought a sandwich one day from a shop I knew wrapped everything in paper but it cost £6.30!! It was a decent size, but still, £6.30 for a sandwich!! Nuts!

The final count for my single use plastic came in at 52 pieces.

1 plaster

2 compeed plasters

1 piece of cling film

1 jar label

25 little plastic veg stickers

2 plastic bags my shoes were in

1 plastic bag a new set of bathroom scales came in

3 plastic stickers on the shoes

2 straws

1 yogurt film 

1 milk bottle

1 squash bottle

1 yeast carton lid

1 plastic hanger on my socks

1 plastic tag keeping the socks together

1 plastic lid on my sweet chilli sauce

2 plastic bags in my tights boxes

1 oat milk carton plastic lid

1 plastic glass 

1 gift card I received for my birthday

1 wrapping around the top of a tonic bottle

1 plastic window in the bag some bread came in at a restaurant

I’ve only included that which I generated during the month through purchases, this tally wasn’t about historical purchases that won’t be repeated. I am gradually clearing the plastic items that are in my house as they are being replaced by non-single-use plastic alternatives so in addition to the above there were also around 12 items that went to the recycling (assuming they will be). So if I continue at the rate that I did in July, then in 12 months that would be 624 items of plastic. Against the average of 4490 so 13.9%. Volume wise I would guess it’s a lot lower and if I shop somewhere other than Sainsbury’s hopefully I’ll be able to avoid the little plastic veg stickers that made up almost 50% of the count.

So, tomorrow it’s August and where to from here? Well one thing I do know is that other than the yogurt and butter, there’s very little I’m prepared to buy that comes in plastic. I’m really pleased that my doing this has made people think a bit more about what they’re doing and I remain hopeful that if I continue to do so, it might make other people think about making some changes to their habits too. But as I always said, this was a personal journey. Other people will realise the importance of making changes at different times, hopefully before it’s too late, although sadly as a species, I don’t think we will. Plastic production has surged over the past 50 years, from 15 million tonnes in 1964 to 311 million tonnes in 2014, and is expected to double again over the next 20 years. About 4% of the petroleum consumed worldwide each year is used to make plastic, and another 4% is used to power plastic manufacturing processes. Much of this plastic ends up in our oceans, choking our marine life and slowly (but getting much quicker) destroying our beautiful planet.

However, to end on a positive note. I have clearly not been the only person doing plastic free July. I can’t find figures for 2019, they may not be out yet, but last year 120 million people across the globe took part in the challenge from 177 countries. So even if that’s stayed the same this year, based on my plastic use that’s potentially around 39 BILLION pieces of plastic that didn’t end up in landfill, or more importantly our oceans this year. So whilst it’s nowhere near enough, it’s definitely something to be thankful for.

22nd July 2019

Today I received a number of emails from the various groups I signed up to for Plastic Free July talking about how we just have one more week of the challenge to go. It's true I guess, there is only just over a week of July remaining but this lifestyle change can't just be for a month. I can't do all I'm doing in July and then on 1st August go back to my previous habits. Making such a profound change to the way I shop and how I live took real effort at the start and in a way felt a bit like eating olives. I love olives but lots of people don't. They are pretty much the only food that people who like try to convince people who don't like them that they should. The only way to get them to like olive is repetition. Changing the way I shop has been the same. I've had to keep making small changes regularly so that they gradually become habit.

The one place that has really helped me with many of the small changes I've made is Zéro 

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This lovely zero waste store opened a few short months ago in Merton Abbey Mills. It's such a game changer when you're trying to cut down on your plastic waste. You take your own tubs with you, get them weighed, fill them with whatever goodies you need, weigh them again and just pay for what you buy. Anyone just popping in without tubs, they have kilner or jam jars that you can buy or paper bags to put your purchases in. They're only new but their range is growing by the week and they list everything on the website so you can see if they have what you need before you go. It's extended what I eat as I can just have a small amount of something to see if I like it before I buy a large quantity and most of the products I find way more delicious than the supermarket equivalents.I'm lucky as there's also a zero waste shop in Tooting Broadway market too. They stock many similar things to Zéro but also have white wine vinegar which I needed to make a descaler for my bathroom. Turns out the squash bottle came in handy after all!

The idea for the shop came when Alicia and Josh tried to do Plastic Free July in 2018 and realised just how hard reducing their waste was. Having lived in Italy and France they were also used to shopping in specialist shops such as bakers and butchers (where waste is minimal to non-existent) rather than supermarkets (where convenience results in quite the opposite) and so they decided to set up Zéro.

I remember when I was young, my Nan used to shop in the 'weigh and save' shops regularly. We had them in both Nuneaton and Bedworth and it used to be quite exciting going there as a child. For many years though I've loved the convenience of a supermarket, as so many of us have, and now we're paying for that. Luckily, the zero waste shops are popping up all over the place. The following link lists a whole load of them that may be close to you:
Zero waste shops in the UK
I'm also fortunate that I work on Tottenham Court Road and have two Planet Organic shops close by. They also have a weigh and pay section and I got some delicious pecan nuts from there recently. Plus I get a student discount so it makes it reasonable.

My next step will be to try to change my supermarket to one less convenient locally but with a greater range of loose fruit and veg so that I can extend my diet again. Apparently Morrisons are going to start introducing many more loose fruit and veg lines and we have one in Wimbledon, so I might have to start shopping there. It's not my favourite supermarket but I miss cherry tomatoes... and cucumbers... and cauliflower... and potatoes that aren't baking potatoes...etc. etc. etc.

I saw a placard on Facebook today that was 'it's just one straw (said 76 billion people)' and it's so true. We might not think that our actions have much of an impact, but when everyone is having the same impact it's huge. Just don't forget, that can be for the bad or the good...

18th July 2019

Tonight I've been watching Serengeti on the TV. In 2008 I visited the Serengeti as part of 6 week tour I did through Africa from South Africa, through Namibia (or Nambia as some of us came to know it!), Botswana, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania. That was part of a bigger round the world trip that I did. It was at least 29,000 miles and involved long flights. In 2017/18 I did a trip around Eastern Europe and South America. Not quite sure of the mileage for that but I suspect it wasn't too far different from the first trip. On that trip Brazil made it 40 countries that I've visited and going to very few of those was by a means of travel that wasn't a flight.

Whilst this month I've signed up to Plastic Free July, for me this has to be part of a wider commitment to making changes to reducing my impact on the environment. Travel is one of the biggest impacts that we can have after procreating. I have absolutely no intention of producing offspring and by that very choice I've done the best thing that I could so far for the environment but that shouldn't stop me addressing the other areas of my life. Food and travel have to be the next areas I tackle.

Travel is a great passion of mine. I really love discovering new places, learning about new cultures, meeting new people and feeling part of a global community. There are many more places that I want to visit than I have already. One thing about travelling is that you meet other people who have travelled and so you always learn about new places you've not been to. It's inevitable that the more you travel, the longer the list of places you want to visit gets!

There are a number of different carbon calculators available online that can be used to determine the effects of your travel. However, other than walking, it's pretty clear that an accurate calculation of your carbon footprint is difficult. Actually, even walking isn't easy to calculate because you wear clothes and all of these have a carbon footprint and you could have gotten your energy to do the walk from beef or veg, which have very different carbon footprints. A solo long distance car journey could be worse than a short flight. The carbon footprint of producing a car or an aeroplane should all feed in to the calculations. but where does this stop? I don't know and trying to figure this out around a month ago left me so bewildered and had such a negative effect on my mental health that I decided I had to take a step back.

What I do know though is that I can't give up travelling and I want to limit the effects that my travel has on our planet. As such, I have needed to reach an agreement with myself on what I will allow myself to do. Fortunately I love trains. As such, I have decided that the vast majority of my holidays will be reliant on this form of transport. Having travelled on trains throughout Europe I know that this means that a lot of our continent (I will always think of myself as European) will be accessible to me. Similarly, I'm good on buses too and the last weekend I had a brilliant trip to the Champagne region of France with my friends Cathy and Chris. it was a bus tour that went through the Eurotunnel and was fab. Being a bus it had the added bonus that we could carry our champagne purchases home easily with us!

However, I have friends in many countries that other than by a long boat trip, the only reasonable form of transport to get to them will be flying. As such, I'm going to permit myself one long haul flight every two years. Other than necessary connections there or back, those trips won't be allowed to include internal flights. To give you an example, next year I want to go and visit my friends Sunita and Kate in North America. Sunita is in Vancouver and Kate in Eugene (Oregon). I would love to visit Seattle and as that's in between the two, I think I'll fly to Vancouver, then I can get the bus to Seattle and a train to Eugene, Yes, I could fly between Seattle and Eugene, but I figure I'll see so much more of the country by being at ground level. However, I won't be able to fly back directly to the UK from Eugene so a connecting flight will be permitted. Short haul flights are out. I'll need to find a way to travel on land/sea to access European cities.

This will be a sacrifice for me, but I genuinely can't justify an approach to reducing my environmental impact that doesn't include reducing my time in the air. Weirdly I'm actually quite excited by the thought of more train travel and who knows, I might even try cruising at some point!

15th July 2019

Today I'm about half way through the Plastic Free July Challenge. It's my last day of vacation and I thought that my post was going to be about travel, as I've just had a lovely weekend in France drinking champagne! However, I run the risk of it being a long rant instead and well, as I need to get rid of some of my irritation today I decided that the only sensible thing to do was to pour an Edinburgh rhubarb gin and ginger ale into my glass, and my woes out online! Tomorrow we can talk travel instead.

I've mentioned before how I take my recycling to the unit outside of Sainsbury's. Sometimes in the past I've had to return 2 or 3 times because the unit has been full to overflowing. This is both great to see that people are recycling but it's incredibly frustrating for someone who walks their recycling to the centre and so can't just leave it in the boot of the car until the next time I'm there. I have to take it with me shopping and then take it home and repeat the process until they have emptied it and I can deposit my recycling. I don't know what has been going on recently but there must have some good parties in Collier's Wood as today when I got to the glass recycling section I was greeted with this...

The unit was completely full and so people had left their bottles on top of the bin and at the side of it. Occasionally when this happens, the bins are actually accessible from the other side and so I walked around and to my horror, was met with this...

So, not accessible from the other side. To add insult to injury, most of the bottles were in carrier bags which of course can't be recycled and there was lots of other waste mixed in with this too and I of course can't be certain that it will be separated out when they come to collect them. You'll see on the left hand side of the picture the white waste. When I went to look at it it was polystyrene sheets.

I took a close up of what can't be disposed of in the units and they clearly say 'No thank you' to polystyrene.

I'd like to think (if that's the right phrase) that it was illiteracy rather than laziness that resulted in that but I don't think any situation could be classed as good when you're hoping for the reason for something to be due to lack of basic education.

Anyway, from here I headed into Sainsbury's. I've mentioned before that I joined a plastic free waste tips group on Facebook and people had mentioned that Sainsbury's was getting better with reducing the amount of plastic waste. I can only assume the people posting this were not shopping in Collier's Wood. I was still limited to only salad or beef tomatoes that weren't in packaging. Now they have nectarines etc. in I was looking forward to trying some, but if they're not packaged in plastic, you can only buy them priced per item and at 40p each, that was a little too much for what I wanted to pay. Oranges were 30p each. I could have bought pears and apples by weight but I figured I'd stick with my tinned fruit.

Having a bit more time to shop, I did do some comparisons and to avoid waste, you really are paying more. I needed mayonnaise which I knew I could buy in a jar, but the 85p jar of mayonnaise had plastic around the seal. To buy a version that didn't have a plastic seal I ended up spending £1.50 for a jar of the same weight. They sell without plastic seals so they're clearly not necessary and they're not there to protect the expensive products as it's the cheaper ones that have them.

I did find that Sainsbury's sweet chilli sauce comes in a glass bottle so hopefully it's on a par with Blue Dragon who changed to a plastic bottle. The cap is still plastic though but as overall that's much less plastic I did go for it.

I had forgotten how much I like the Lloyd Grossman pasta sauces as I generally make my own, but as I was wandering around rather than being incredibly focused on the items on my list I was reminded of these sorts of options and so got a couple that were on offer. They're in glass jars that are a great size for reusing for jams and marmalades so will work for Christmas presents. I got lots of other ideas for cooking sauces that were in glass jars that will be quick to make and with the addition of lots of veggies will mean I'm eating healthily but not producing plastic waste so that was good.

Anyway, I went to pay and had a really lovely guy on the till who was a bit baffled by my veggio bags, so I explained that they were my bags and they were reusable which meant I didn't have to use the stupidly thin and pointless plastic bags that Sainsbury's provides. He said that they were a great idea but Sainsbury's had done lots over the last year to reduce plastic waste and I quote 'now we charge we don't give out anywhere near as many carrier bags as we used to' and I think this just both riled me and made me sad in equal measure, because I realised that this is the view of most people. There is a global blind spot when it comes to plastic. I agreed with him that it was great, but they'd had no choice but to introduce a charge, it wasn't an initiative they had taken themselves. I explained about how avoiding plastic had limited choice in my options for fruit and veg and just how much Sainsbury's food came packaged in plastic, making it challenging for both someone like me who's doing plastic free July or anyone who's trying to reduce their plastic footprint. I realise it wasn't his fault and told him so but said that if he had any way of feeding back to his company how bad it was I would be grateful. I've written to them myself previously through Greenpeace surveys but of course, with so many people buying their goods, it makes little difference to them.

From there I went to M&S as I needed some tights for work. Because I buy a multipack they of course feel the need to wrap them in plastic inside the box so add on another 2 pieces of plastic waste to today's count.

I then saw two rats running across the bridge in the park on my way home so my wildlife count was up too!

And so, at the half way point I thought I'd had a little tally of the single use plastic that I've used/bought so far this month, be it intentionally or unintentionally:

1 plaster
2 compeed plasters
1 piece of cling film
1 jar label
12 little plastic veg stickers
2 plastic bags (that my shoes were in)
3 plastic stickers on the shoes
2 straws (one in wahaca and one in a drink whilst I was away at the weekend)
1 yogurt film (I'd bought some in a good quality tub that I'll be able to reuse but didn't think about the film...)
1 milk bottle
1 squash bottle
1 yeast carton lid
1 plastic hanger on my socks
1 plastic tag keeping the socks together
1 plastic lid on my sweet chilli sauce
2 plastic bags in my tights boxes
1 oat milk carton plastic lid
1 plastic glass (for the champagne on the way to France)
1 gift card I received for my birthday

So 36 pieces. By volume when crushed, probably around 3 cubic litres. I was going to save this statistic until the end of the month but it is so horrifying, I feel like I need to share it with you multiple times, Earlier in the year I went to talk at the British Library on plastic waste. One of the speakers was Daniel Webb who had moved to Margate and discovered that his options for recycling plastic were limited and he was told just to put his plastic waste in with his general household waste. After this, he went for a run along Margate coast and after seeing how much waste was in the sea he wondered if anything he'd ever thrown away had made it into the sea and decided to save every piece of plastic waste he generated over the year, but not modify his plastic waste use so that he could get a real feel for how much waste he produced (it was carefully washed prior to storage!). Over the course of the year he generated 4,490 individual pieces of waste. Of these:

60% was food packaging (salad and veg wrappers and bread bags)
93% was single use (4176)
8 items were made from biodegradable material
56 were made of recycled material

If you take him to be an average person, this means that UK produces around 293 billion (that's 293,000,000,000) pieces of plastic waste PER YEAR. That would fill and area with a footprint of Clapham Common and the height of the Shard PER YEAR. And that's just the UK. Based on Plastic Free July, if I continue to produce plastic waste at the same rate as I have over the last two weeks, I'll have generated 864 pieces of single use plastic myself, so around 19% of the average and I've tried hard to limit my plastic use. I guess I need to try harder.

This is one helluva big (hopefully at some point plastic-free) mountain to climb.

11th July 2019

Today is my birthday! Being plastic free can be a minefield when it comes to birthdays. It's always incredibly kind of people to give a gift, but the packaging associated with gifts can mean you end up generating waste completely unintentionally. However, this year my friends and family have been super in helping me to keep my waste to a minimum - I know some have done so purposefully but whether or not that's the case the gifts have been lovely and I'm really happy at the lack of waste. The main waste is sellotape, this isn't recyclable but when I was looking into paper tapes at Christmas I found them to be incredibly expensive. I'm also a sellotape user so please don't think I'm complaining here, just stating facts. I will continue to use the roll that I have until it's used up (which as it's had hardly any used will be quite some time). I've read many stories this month about how people are throwing out anything in their houses that is plastic so they can go plastic free and that really isn't the point of Plastic Free July. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it's about not generating single use plastic waste. If you have a plastic tub, use it, and use it again and again and again until it's no further use. Throwing out perfectly good plastic items is as bad as generating single use plastic waste.

But back to birthdays. I also received a present in a gift box with bubble wrap. This is totally fine with me as I will use the box for someone else and given how many times I move house, I wouldn't be without bubble wrap! Various people have been really generous and given me money and my sister and her family have adopted me an Orangutan. She got me a Hawksbill Turtle for Christmas and I absolutely love this type of gift. There was a WWF stand at Hampton Court Palace last week and when the guy went to ask me about adopting an animal I think he thought I was a bit of a nutter when I got really excited and told him that I already had a turtle and had a new animal on the way for my birthday the next week which I didn't know what it was but was really excited about it! For me, I'm delighted to receive charity gifts; I give to range of charities every month so this totally aligns with my values. I don't ever give to children's, animal or cancer research charities but the charities I support monthly are: Sightsavers, Wateraid, RNLI and Macmillan (I support the cancer support charities, just not the research ones - they get enough money), my Amazon Smile charity is the Stroke Association and Sparks card is the British Legion. One that caught my eye recently is the Toilet Twinning charity where you 'twin' your toilet with one in a developing country which enables them to build new toilets in the places where people don't currently have them. Think this may go on my Christmas list!

One of my friends gave me some fabulous giraffe material, which was a genius present. She gave it me in a paper bag which will go in my recycling and I'll have much fun making things with the material.

Generally at Christmas over the last few years my gifts have been wrapped in brown paper. There will be ribbons and bows that won't be recyclable but if people were so inclined, they could recycle the wrapping paper. To make it fully recyclable, a rustic jute string can be used to tie it up and luggage tags make great gift tags - I usually get a either a stamp and add a decoration or use a shaped cutter of something like holly leaves to give them a festive feel. I think this year I'm going to make material bags. They won't necessarily be in a festive print but I have lots of odds and ends of material that this would be a good way of using it up, plus material bags are always handy to have around.

Chances are, if you've received a gift from me in a gift bag, it will be one that I've received previously. Even if the tag's been written on, it can just be removed and the bag is perfectly good enough. In a way, to reduce waste you do have to be a bit of a hoarder, but I find the 'Really Useful Boxes' are great at helping to keep things tidy. Yes, they're plastic but as I've said before, reusable plastic is fine; it's the single use stuff that causes virtually all the problems we have with it.

I'm going to busy celebrating over the next few days and so won't be posting until next week. By then I'll be half way through the month and so we'll see how well I've been doing and I'll tell you how plastic free (or not) my celebrations were!!

9th July 2019

Today I'm feeling really fed up with the whole plastic thing.  Not the stopping using it, I feel good about doing that, but since doing Plastic Free July I've become even more conscious of plastic and how hard it is to avoid it and even when you do your best to stay away from it you can't.

Yesterday I'd had a lovely day walking in the Chilterns with my friend Kaye. Again, it wasn't a plastic free day as I'd used two blister plasters but as I had my new beautiful Osprey rucksack with the hydration pack and had taken my own lunch, the only purchase I made all day was my train ticket so I was a very low plastic user. We had a super day. We'd done the walk a few weeks ago but it rained all day. We said how lovely we thought it would be on a dry day when you're not walking with your head down and just plodding along. And we were right! Yesterday was a beautiful day and we were in t-shirts rather than waterproofs! This was the view from one particularly steep hill!

 Today, I was trying to buy a pair of trainers to replace my converse and a lightweight waterproof jacket that I can just throw on when I'm bimbling around. I'd looked in Kingston a couple of weeks ago but didn't have much luck so decided to head to Westfield today. Now I hate shopping at the best of times and it's an activity I avoid whenever possible. I did have a jacket in mind but I was open for the shoes. Anyway, turns out John Lewis in Westfield doesn't have the Joules concession so my first choice of jacket was out, instantly darkening my mood. and then I didn't really have any luck finding shoes. So I decided to give up and have something to eat. I went to Wahaca thinking if I eat in then I won't be generating waste. WRONG! Wahaca still uses plastic straws. Unbelievable. I don't need a straw to drink from a glass when it's not a blended drink. Use a swizzle stick to mix my drink before you bring it to me. In addition to this, I made very poor food choices so rather than the relaxing lunch I was hoping for I left feeling very irritable indeed. Well, I know not to give them my custom again until they change their practices.

Anyway, my route home was taking me right by John Lewis on Oxford Street and a quick check revealed this one to be Joules stockist. So I got off and whilst they didn't have my size in the jacket I was after, they had the same style in my size and I figured I could just order the one I wanted online. Sadly it made me look like a sack of spuds... So it was a jacket fail as I didn't find anything else I liked the look of.

Whilst there I decided to see what shoes they had and there were two pairs that took my eye. A silver sequin trainer from Geox and a gold one from Michael Kors. In the end I went with the Michael Kors.

I really like the shoes. I really dislike the packaging...

Why is it necessary to wrap each shoe in a bag that has holes in it (for safety reasons obviously) but which then makes the bag pretty useless for storing stuff in. I will keep them of course as I'm sure I'll be able to use them for something, but seriously? It is just not required when they're in a box. As such I have this much recyclable packing (one box and some tissue paper):

And this much non-recyclable (two bags and three sticky labels):

 

I also needed some new trainer socks to go in them and was delighted to find these. Not sure if you can see it in the picture but they're sparkly!

From these, there is the plastic hanger and then a plastic tag that keeps them attached together.

So I feel like I've had a real plastic fail today. Six items of plastic in one day. Admittedly some of this this I didn't know was going to be there (the straw which I discovered when my drink arrived and the bags around the shoes - the guy serving me took them away to pack them and I only discovered the bags when I got home).

I'm in a plastic free group on Facebook and it seems that lots of people are hitting a low point at the moment as the enormity of the situation is becoming real.  I guess every little helps. Every time I do use something twice, it's reducing the amount of waste being generated and I can only hope there are enough of us to be seeing a difference in the amount of plastic ending up in our oceans.

7th July 2019

Today marks the end of week one and I thought I'd start with a tally of the single use plastic I've generated over the last seven days.

1 x plaster
1 x piece of cling film (at work)
1 x jar label
6 x little plastic veg stickers (off aubergines and peppers and a cabbage)

I'd already reported the cling film. The plaster was for a blister on my foot from what are the most innocuous looking sandals that are actually lethal. The jar label was from some cheese stuffed peppadew peppers that I was so excited at finding in jars and not needing to buy them in a single use plastic tub, I hadn't realised that the label was single use plastic. Had it been a paper label I could have soaked it off and recycled it of course... The small plastic labels do mean that I didn't have to buy the veg in plastic packaging and so is minimal, but still unnecessary I think. They could be programmed into the supermarket software in the way other price per item fruits are. Unless I shop at a market though I don't see how I can avoid them.

As I'd mentioned in my last post I've just had a few days with my parents. We've had a really lovely time. The day they arrived, I took them over to my lovely Zero shop partly to show them my shop and its wider setting of Merton Abbey Mills and partly because I needed some tea and they sell loose leaf English Breakfast. That evening we went to a local Turkish restaurant, Mezze Mangal which was delicious and whilst I don't know what wrapping they have the food delivered in, there were no sachets or anything like that for us to generate any single use plastic waste.

Thursday we went to Hampton Court Flower Show. It was the most wonderful day. Here are some pictures from the show as an aside...

You may be able to guess that I'm a big alium fan!!

I had taken my water bottle with me along with my Keep Cup and Mum and Dad had their reusable cups with them too. It was great as they had water refill points that meant we didn't need to buy water in bottles and we had our coffee in our cups. I was absolutely horrified by how many take away cups must have been used at the event. It was unbelievable how many we saw. In actual fact, I didn't see one other person drinking coffee out of a reusable cup. Added to that, other than Edinburgh Gin, who were using cardboard shot 'glasses' (which weren't plastic lined - I put my tongue in and it stuck to the inside!) every other stall that was offering tastings were using plastic shot glasses. It meant I didn't taste any of the other drinks. We hadn't taken lunch with us and I expected it to be quite difficult to avoid plastic. As it was, we ended up sharing three mini pork pies which came in paper bags. I'd taken my cutlery with me so we were able to cut them up and not use plastic cutlery.

But of course, a Pimm's was obligatory and whilst I was all ready to ask them to put it in my Keep Cup when Mum decided we might as well get a pitcher!

You put a deposit on it and then get that back when you return it. It meant that all of us could use our coffee cups to drink it out of and as I had taken my stainless steel straws, we still got to feel like we weren't too 'functional' in our treat!

The only other thing we had was an ice cream, in a cone, so no waste there either!

On Friday we went to Kew Gardens (💖) for the day and took a picnic with us. I'd been concerned that to have cucumber I'd need to buy a plastic wrapped one at the supermarket, but Mum had one ready that she'd grown herself and so I avoided unnecessary plastic! We had carrot, cucumber and celery sticks (I'd bought these a couple of weeks ago (yes in plastic) but they were still good and so no food waste, tomatoes and Dad's homegrown radishes. I made spicy turmeric hummus, babganoush and Nigella's bar nuts. I'd also made the bread rolls, cauliflower cake and lemon, almond and blueberry cake and they were out the freezer. The cheese filled peppadews were the only item that generated any waste. We used five paper napkins (one each and an additional two to wipe the plates before they went back in my picnic rucksack). I have had these in my picnic rucksack for a long time; I will be changing to cloth napkins once they've run out. I had also been dreading having a picnic as I was expecting to generate a lot more waste than that. I'd cooked the aubergines for the babaganoush on the Monday when I had the time to do it and then frozen them ready to defrost and add all the other ingredients on the Friday morning. Wasn't sure if that would work, but it did beautifully. The hummus I'd made on Wednesday morning which took no time at all - just put all the ingredients in the food processor, whizzed it up for a minute or so and it was all done!

The Dale Chihuly exhibition is on at the moment, here is a taster of the installations for you...

There has been no other waste generated whilst my parents have been visiting other than peelings etc which will go in the food waste bin.

I'm incredibly organised and so this has helped. I love making my own dips etc. and so that made it easy and it may not be so much if this isn't your thing. What was a real eye-opener to me though was Hampton Court. When you think it followed Glastonbury which had gone plastic free, the RHS really needs to up its game. There are flower shows all around the country throughout the year and if they generate only half of what Hampton Court will have done then that will be a HUGE amount of waste. Other than three paper bags and three cardboard shot 'glasses' the Hodgetts family aren't responsible for any more of it than that.

3rd July 2019

Today I'd like to talk about laundry and cleaning. For many years I was a fan of the sponge scourers. I'd happily buy a six pack and work my way through them, throwing each one in the bin when it reached the end of its life, or I'd used it to clean something particularly manky and cut it off in its prime.

Then I became aware of microplastics.

We all get the plastic packaging issues and have seen the iconic pictures of the plastic bags floating in the water, but what about do these break down into? Microplastics. I suddenly realised that each time my scourer was used and particularly as it was disintegrating towards the end of its life, it was happily shedding microplastics directly into our water systems. It wasn't even having to escape from the bin bag I'd put it in to do its damage and so I decided I needed to find an alternative.

Quite some time back, despite its convenience, I decided to stop using paper towels and bought myself a roll of bamboo paper towels. Again they weren't cheap, I think I paid around £9 for the roll.

But I now use these for washing up with too. They just go in the washing machine when they're dirty. There are 20 on the roll and so far I've used about 8 (in around 9 months), and I haven't had to dispose of any of them yet; they're all still in use. When I do, they'll compost down. They are quite stiff when you first use them but they go super soft after being in the washing machine. It's recommended not to use fabric conditioner but I rarely do a wash without it so mine get fabric conditionered too!

Sometimes though you just need a bit more oomph and a cloth isn't enough. So I decided to try out loofahs. Yep, those things we also used to use in the shower.

It was weird at first and the one I bought ballooned in the water to be huge! So I just cut it down to the size I wanted and I now have 4 to use. I bought it at the beginning of November and the first piece is only just starting to look a little sorry for itself now. There's still some life in it yet though. The worst part of this was the packaging it came in. The loofah was about 10cm x 8cm x 2cm why dry. But it got delivered in a box that was about 30cm x 25cm x 25cm and with loads of paper packaging and covered in packing tape. I did for a while think all my efforts had been offset in one fell swoop!

...and then there's the times where even the loofah won't work. And for that, fortunately I had a stash of those curly metal scourers which I think I can recycle with my tin cans. I have been using fairy washing up liquid but you need so very little of this, a bottle can easily last me 6 months.

For laundry and cleaning my lovely little Zero shop comes to the rescue again. They sell Ecover products so I just take my old washing liquid and fabric conditioner bottles and get them refilled. You can see on the bottles their weights so I only pay for the product not the packaging too. I also used an old Simple bottle to buy my all purpose cleaner in as well!

The all purpose cleaner you dilute and so when it was finished I kept the spray bottle from the last lot of cleaner I purchased and I dilute it straight in the bottle to use. I did find it's not so great on limescale but I'm going to experiment with white wine vinegar for that when I get round to buying some!

I've been really impressed with the laundry detergent and fabric conditioner, they get my my clothes clean and smell nice but not overpowering.

My parents will be coming to visit me later today for a few days. I may disappear for a bit whilst they're here but I'll definitely be back at the weekend talking about avoiding single use plastics on days out and picnics!

2nd July 2019

Today I thought we could talk toiletries. But before we do, I have to admit to use of single use plastic. It was at work where the options were limited to literally just that or a significant amount of food waste. We regularly have meetings where food is ordered in and then doesn't get eaten. Today, the majority of that food was fruit. Had I finished work on time, it wouldn't have been an issue, I'd have left the building by the time the meeting ended, but I didn't and I didn't want the food to go to waste, plus we have mice in our office that would have thought it was Christmas if I'd left it out. The sandwiches which were in plastic trays I put in the fridge, but we don't have tubs to put leftovers in so all I could do to salvage it was wrap the platter in cling film before it went in the fridge. I had decided that letting all that food go to waste was worse. But I think I'll be suggesting we get some tupperware in the department so we don't keep having this issue.

So, toiletries. I did a very quick recce of my bathroom to see what I have that is in single use plastic. This is on the side of my bath...

By the sink I have toothpaste and mouthwash (the latter I rarely use and it's been there for months!) I don't often have baths, being a shower girl, and so I've had the bubble bath for a very long time. The femfresh I'm going to struggle to find a replacement for - fortunately the last bottle ran out last week which I decided was far enough from July that I was allowed to buy a replacement bottle. But you'll notice the shower gel is getting very low. When I returned to London I decided to ditch the shower gel and go for soap. I have been using this brand of shower gel for years, I love it. A lot. So it was difficult for me to let go of it. I decided to get the soap in the same range but it dried my skin out really badly. I then tried Dove but I never really got on with that either - plus I was only ever able to find it in packs of 2 wrapped in single use plastic. But I've decided that the shower gel has got to go. To be fair, a bottle lasts me 3 months. I use a body puff (yes it's plastic) that I learnt how to retie when it becomes untangled but this means I end up using very little each time. However, it's still gotta go. I decided to try Dr Bronner's.

 It's wrapped in recycled paper and gets really good reviews so I'm being positive about the change and looking forward to trying a new product.

I've been using a solid shampoo for quite a few months now. That change really wasn't difficult at all. I currently get one from Lush although when my Zero shop restocks it I'll be supporting them instead.

One thing I did like from Lush when I got this last night was that they no longer put a sticker on the bag automatically, they ask if you need one. Which of course I didn't so my bag is fully recyclable.

I do use a leave in conditioner though that is in a plastic bottle. You can get solid conditioners too and so I will need to start investigating those.

My friends have been listening to my tirade for months about how irritated I am that you can no longer buy toilet paper in the supermarket that isn't wrapped in plastic. It's nuts. Not a single brand. I had been having 'Who gives a crap' toilet advertised in my instagram feed quite a lot which I really wanted to try. They're a great company and donate 50% of their profits to help build toilets and improve sanitation in the developing world. This massively appealed to me but the problem I had was with delivery. If I'm not in, then packages can't be accepted in my building and I didn't really want to have it delivered to work and bring it home in batches. Cue my wonderful Zero shop again - they sell it!!

And so now I can buy recycled toilet paper, that's wrapped in paper, support my lovely little shop and also a socially responsible company. I now have a happy bum!!

I go to the dentist once a year (I have good teeth) but the one thing the dentist kept telling me is that I need to floss. I go through phases of being really good and being really bad at flossing. But one thing I did know is that floss is bad for the environment. Even when I was being good I was being bad. So I did what any sensible person does and asked the internet what my options were for environmentally friendly floss. Here I have cautionary tale. The first lot that I bought was from Planet Organic from a company call Georganics. All I had read seemed to recommend its green credentials but I subsequently discovered the carbon version I had bought has polyester yarn in it (they're now very open about this on their website). Not good. However, they also make a silk version which is fully biodegradable. It's a tricky one with the silk worms but they take the silk once the worms leave the cocoons and so this is much more humane. It comes in a glass bottle and is packaged in cardboard. It's a bit thicker than regular floss but I like it.

And now I can be good when I'm being good!

Toothpaste and deodorant were tricky ones for me. I'm putting these weirdly together because I bought them both from Zero at the weekend. I'm a sweater (as in I sweat a lot rather than I'm a knitted garment) and I find many antiperspirants don't work for me, My go-to at the moment is Dove 24hr invisible but of course it's in plastic. I'd done quite a bit of research on natural deodorants, but that's all they are, deodorants and not antiperspirants. However, in the name of research I've decided to give them a go. I'd read that the first two weeks of using them are the worst, as your body eliminates the aluminium which is the active ingredient in an antiperspirant. Don't know if that's true or not; bit sceptical. But the one the Zero shop sells in a cardboard tube gets pretty good reviews online and so I decided whilst I'm on leave the next 2 weeks will be the best time to try it. Yesterday it was brilliant, I literally did not smell at all. I think I put a little less on today and whilst I think I need to use a little more, again, I'd be completely happy being in public, which isn't something I can always say with regular deodorant at the end of the day without a reapplication.

Next to the deodorant in the picture are dentabs. These are toothpaste tablets that you chew and then brush your teeth. I used the first one this morning and my initial impression is not a good one. But I wasn't sure what to expect and I'm going to persevere. My teeth felt fine directly afterwards, but it wasn't long before they stopped feeling smooth and clean. I went a bit crazy buying them - there are a lot there! But as I say, I'll keep going and see how my teeth feel at the end of the month. If they're not great then I'll try a recommendation from my friend Alison for a toothpaste that's sold in a glass jar.

Finally, I am a big fan of Bioderma. Their products have rescued my skin after I changed my pill and my skin rebelled. The micellar water comes in single use plastic. It's recyclable but it's still single use. That's going to be a challenge to decide what to do about that. I have enough left for it not to be a huge thing a the moment. Similarly I'm hoping the serum doesn't run out by the end of the month. I have given up using cotton wool with the micellar water though. I have started using Cheeky Wipes makeup remover pads that you use then put them through the washing machine.

They won't work for nail varnish, so on the rare occasion that I use it, I do need to use cotton wool for removing it, but that 's once in a blue moon for my fingers, and so it's mainly for my toenails which I must admit are naked as the day I was born at the moment (I'm super lazy about this stuff these days!)

All of these changes have been expensive. As an example, the deodorant was £6.99, the Dove is £2.79. The soap was £4.99, the shower gel £2.50. It's really annoying that to have less of an environmental impact, my budget takes a significant hit.

Given I'm starting with new products at the beginning of the month, I'll review them at the end of the month to let you know how I get on.

1st July 2019

So today's the day when it all starts! I feel like I'm on a bit of an adventure and I'm really quite excited about it. I do love a good project (which is handy given I'm a Project Manager). Although I haven't yet made a spreadsheet to go with it, nor at this point in time do I need a Gantt Chart to map it out, but there is no doubt that at some point there will definitely be the former because, well, I do love spreadsheets (I even have the mug to prove it!).

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm not on a mission to change anyone else's habits (my Mum and Dad may not agree with this mind!), I'm doing this because it's important to me. I'm fortunate enough that I have the time and resources to try out new things. I also only have me to inconvenience. Being single and child-free is a definite bonus here (one of many!). If I want to spend the time going to 17 different shops to buy my groceries I can. If I want to spend a lot more money doing so, it's only my budget that's affected. But I realise this isn't the case for everyone. It's definitely costing me more money to live this way and although I am noticing that prices for non-plastic wrapped food are falling, they're still not as cheap as their plastic wrapped cousins. It is also less convenient having to go to multiple places to buy your shopping, and for time-poor people the convenience will outweigh the damage every time. I get that. Yesterday I got really upset at the woman in front of me in Sainsbury's who not only bought carrier bags in the shop, when she decided she didn't want to buy any more, had taken a wadge of the pointless thin bags they give you for the fruit and vegetables and took her mainly plastic wrapped purchases and put them in those. Many of those. It seems incredibly irresponsible to me. But I don't know her reasons behind it, so whilst I can be upset about it, it's not my place to judge. Just to clarify - I got upset internally, not actually at her!

This leads me on to my single use plastic purchases yesterday. I bought milk, squash and yeast, all or parts of which are packaged in single use plastic. And I wanted to explain my rationale behind the purchases.

Milk

I have my parents coming to stay for a few days this week. They're doing really well in improving their environmental footprint. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?! But we do like a nice cup of tea. With milk. I'm generally a soy milk drinker. Dad's trying out a whole range of non-dairy milk in his porridge in a morning; but none of these options taste as good in a cuppa as cow juice in my mind. It's tricky, because it's not clear on the units where I take my recycling if they take tetra paks. I put them in the bins but I could be actually doing harm (and yes I've looked for contact details so that I could call to find out before you say anything...). They do take plastic milk cartons and Lush will recycle the lids for free so I save those. I don't know that it actually gets recycled, but I have tied myself up in knots figuring out if non-recycled tetrapaks are better or worse than recyclable milk cartons and I can't decide. I also don't know if the carbon footprint of the milk (which is really high) in a recyclable bottle is worse than the lower carbon footprint of the contents of the non-recyclable tetrapak. And so because I was actually getting very troubled by all of this, in quite a bad way, I decided I had to make a call one way or the other and I decided to go with the dairy milk in a recyclable bottle. I'm using it in the tea for sure, but I've also used it to make crumpets which means I don't have to buy any in plastic wrapping, I'm using it to make a vegetarian polenta dish which is one of the many vegetarian dishes my parents will be eating this week (I rarely cook meat at home) and then I'm going to figure out another option so I don't have to keep doing it. My supermarket don't sell milk in glass bottles and I live in a managed block of flats so getting from the milkman isn't an option. We'll see. If anyone has any ideas please leave a comment.

Squash

When I started writing the section below, it's the first time I've ever done the maths to go with this and I think I'm going to need to change a habit here...

I am in love with Robinson's pink grapefruit squash. The recommendation is that it is diluted 1:4 with water. Yesterday I measured out how much I put into my pint glass for the strength I like it. It was 30mls in roughly 520mls water; approximately a 1:17 dilution. Yep, I like it weak, like Sunday School squash. So a 1 litre bottle makes around 30-35 pints for me. It means I buy a bottle roughly once every 6 weeks or so. Yesterday I looked at the cordials that come in glass bottles. There looked like there were really interesting flavours that could be a good alternative. The issue I had though is that they are also a generally 1:4 dilution and I'm not sure if they'll extend to a 1:17 dilution plus they also have an expiry of around 3-4 weeks. They are mostly in 500ml sizes so at half the volume of Robinson's, if they did go to 1:17 dilution, or even a 1:15 dilution I'd need one around every 3 weeks which puts them in the same ball park for the  time to re-buy. So maybe I should have bought the cordial. Doing the maths has been a light bulb moment for me. I will remember for next time my beloved pink grapefruit runs out. And if at worst I can only go to a 1:10 dilution then maybe I just need to drink more water. Or buy it when on offer because those babies are definitely more expensive.

Yeast

Since I came back to London I have only bought a couple of loaves of speciality bread (they were ciabattas, sadly in plastic wrapping). Every other piece of bread has been made by my own fair hand. Generally the ingredients are flour, yeast, olive oil or butter, salt and water and variations thereof. The flour, olive oil and water come in either recyclable packaging or out of the tap. The butter and salt are in tubs that are either recyclable  or which I will be getting refilled the next time I run out. Even if I say I only eat a loaf a month, that's at least 10 plastic bread bags that haven't gone to land fill because of me. But that leaves the yeast. I buy a tin of yeast that lasts me around four months, so three plastic lids a year. They are recyclable. Which I know doesn't actually mean they're good, but I do feel like I can justify this when offset against the non-recyclable plastic that would have been generated if I bought plastic-wrapped loaves from the supermarket. And yes, I do know that I could go to a bakery and buy bread in a paper bag, but I don't know what is in that loaf, and I don't know what the packaging is that their ingredients come in, but I do know that for me, in four months, the only quantifiable piece of single use plastic associated with all the bread I eat is one 5cm plastic lid, and I'm OK with that.

So these were the reasons for my purchases. I'm delighted that in writing them down, for the first, it's made me realise that I need to think about changing what I consume, for the last I feel fully justified in the purchase and for the second, I see an ingrained habit changing. This was an interesting exercise!!