Day 31: Plastic Free July 2014

Here it is, the final day of Plastic Free July 2014. Huge congratulations to those of you who have taken part in the challenge by cutting out every little piece of single-use plastic that you possibly can! I can imagine your relief, although my more manageable adaptation was mere child’s play in comparison.

 

My own experience of Plastic Free July was worthwhile. Although not religiously cutting out all disposable plastics, I had a few things that I had banned for the month (cereals in plastic, shampoo, conditioner, juice in cartons to name a few) plus I avoided a whole lot more by mostly cooking from scratch and trying to choose plastic-light options where I could. Single-use plastic was on my mind a lot during the month and it definitely made me aware of how much it’s used everywhere.

There were three big wins for me this month:
1. Getting back into the habit of cooking and baking. I realised that it’s not too hard to squeeze in a bit of extra food preparation as long as I plan ahead. I found it satisfying to be providing the family with healthy options, and felt really good about reducing my food waste by using up as much as I could from my veg box. I might even have enjoyed it sometimes!

2. Reducing my rubbish. This is something that I always mean to focus on but never quite get around to. Not so funnily enough, when you cut down on single-use plastics, you cut down on what goes in the bin for landfill…

3. Tea bags! I learned that most tea companies use plastic to stick their bags together. As well as switching to tea leaves, it was satisfying to know that others were reading the blog and communicating with the companies they had (previously!) bought their bags from. In fact, if you are interested in this area, as I definitely am, then Lindsay at Treading My Own Path has a campaign to get individuals to contact the big companies. You can read all about it here – she’s even made it really easy for us all!

So will I be carrying on trying to reduce my single-use plastics?

Definitely! I think once you’ve thought about it, written about it, tried it and become slightly obsessed by it, it would be hard to go back to consuming plastic mindlessly. No doubt the topic will crop up in future blog posts so you’ll be able to see how I’m getting on.

What next?

I’ll carry on blogging of course, and my next challenge is just on the horizon. I’m a Blog Ambassador for Zero Waste Week 2014, for which the theme this year is ‘One More Thing’.

Zero Waste Week is happening from 1-7 September and Rae Strauss, who runs it, is looking for people to sign up with their pledge. Why not take a look at the website and consider joining in?

Thanks so much to everyone who has read my blog this month. To those of you who have commented and encouraged, you’ve helped me hugely! Cutting down on single-use plastics is  certainly a challenge, but blogging about it regularly is probably as much of a challenge. It is enjoyable and worthwhile, however, especially when I know it’s being read! Many thanks.

Day 28: Plastic Free July 2014

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?

Well, not me just now, that’s for sure!

Thanks to Plastic Free July, I postponed my hair cut and colour, which was due at the start of the month. At the time of booking, I decided that it was the right thing to do, as the hairdresser would be using lots of products in disposable plastic. Luckily my hairdresser gets booked up several weeks in advance, so I’ve not had the opportunity to change my mind, but – urgh! – this is the longest I’ve left my hair in years and I don’t like it! The colour needs a lift, and my roots are revealing that my hair’s not as natural as I would have you believe…

Also, my hair is really dry. I think this is partly due to my (packaging-free) bar conditioner, which I’m finding difficult to distribute evenly throughout my hair. The best I can manage, by squishing it up with some water, is to make a kind of pulp, which isn’t up to the job. Then because my usual styling wax ran out at the end of July, instead of buying more (in a hard plastic tub), I decided to use a gel that I had kicking around the house. This is also packaged in plastic, but I’ll never get to the end of it (because I don’t like it!) so I decided that as I was saving it from landfill, it would therefore be okay to use. It’s horrible and turns my hair crunchy when applied – as opposed to the sleek and shiny I aspire to.

As I wrote at the start of July, I’ve given up fake tan for the month because it comes in a plastic bottle. I usually apply it with compostable gloves from VegWare, but, because I cover them in fake tan, I don’t put them in with the compost so they will be sent to landfill. I’m not a big consumer of fake tan, but I do apply it every so often in the summer when the weather’s good and I’m wearing short sleeves. I’m missing it just now.

If I was actually doing Plastic Free July according the rules (as opposed to using the evolving bespoke version I’m creating for myself!) then the ‘beauty’ situation would be a lot worse. I’m still using some plastic packaging in my make-up, despite the fact that I was hoping to find alternatives for everything – see this post. I also reneged on my decision not to use nail varnish, based on the fact that I’ve never finished a bottle of the stuff before it turns into a gloopy mess, so using it up wasn’t going to make a difference to what ends up in landfill. Plus I’m allowing myself to use cream (in plastic packaging) for my eczema-prone skin, as I can’t face an outbreak.

To have gone plastic-free on all beauty products would have resulted in me having spent July hiding indoors! I’m pleased however with my compromise. I’d love to say that I don’t care how I look, and that having pasty skin with birds nest hair isn’t an issue…but that wouldn’t be true! How I look is a factor in determining how confident I feel, but it’s only one factor.

Taking part in Plastic Free July has been a positive and enlightening experience – I’ve learned loads and connected with many interesting people. I’ve gained confidence from my involvement in it. A year ago, I thought Plastic Free July was well out of my reach and, although I’ve very much adapted it to make it manageable for me, I’ve embraced it. That gives me a glow that stepping out of a hair salon doesn’t!

Day 19: Plastic Free July 2014

In my last post I mentioned that I have just come back from a short holiday. I’ve been trying to work out the best way that I can write about this, without simply making it a log of all of the plastic we encountered and consumed which runs the risk of being dry, not to mention depressing as – believe me! – there was plastic everywhere…

I quickly gave up on the idea of trying to tightly monitor the plastic we accepted on holiday. It really wouldn’t have been fun for anyone (me, my family or the hotel staff), plus sometimes you have to make a big effort to avoid small amounts of plastic, and is it really worth the hassle in the bigger picture?

Bare with me!

We did avoid plastic where we could, for example, we brought our own picnic lunch with us on the first day, and we packed our bar soap, shampoo and conditioners from home. I had tucked my entire collection of foldable and reusable Onya bags into my suitcase, which I dutifully used instead of plastic carriers. The new tea strainers and tea leaves came along for the holiday, so we avoided using a single tea bag in the hotel room.

On top of that we did other ‘green’ things like bring home the pile of paper waste that we’d accumulated, to be recycled.

The point I’m making, however, is that for all of the small things we did to play our part in Plastic Free July, it felt like a drop in the huge ocean of plastic that was being used in the hotel.

If you are reading this and thinking but every little piece of plastic saved makes a difference! then rest assured that I agree with you. Small actions add up and over time, or with lots of people doing small actions, big changes can be made. Somehow though for this holiday, it didn’t seem enough for me.

The best way that I can think of that I might make a difference to the way this hotel runs, is to email them with suggestions for changes they can make that will have a positive impact on the environment.

Now, I have to admit that a part of me is sighing at the thought of sitting down and composing that email! It will be time consuming and, during Plastic Free July I’ve been taking part in a fair amount of time consuming activities such as cooking, baking, juice squeezing and making special shopping trips for plastic-free products. However, I’m pleased with my progress and I really want to have some things to show for all of my work. If nothing else, my email will have to be read by someone at the hotel and hopefully I will receive a response. This will involve someone thinking, even just a little bit, about what I’ve written.

Some of my fellow bloggers have been illustrating through their writing, the impact that their letters and emails have made during Plastic Free July. Rita day got an amazing response here to an email she sent asking for plastic packaging to be left out of a product. Nicola wrote to Tea Pigs to find out if there is plastic in their tea temples and they emailed her back here, and Zoe wrote to Dairycrest and tweeted Kallo here about their stock cube wrappers. I also tweeted five companies to ask if they use plastic in their tea bags and got an answer from two, which you can read about here, and I tweeted the Ethical Superstore to ask if they could label relevant products as ‘plastic free’ which they agreed to do.

 

 

Hopefully all of this shows that consumers have a voice, and that sometimes positive results are actually achieved!

I will therefore dutifully sit down and write my email and I will, of course, keep you up to date. In the meantime, if you have contacted a company about issues related to plastic, then I’d love to hear about it. If you have been considering writing about a product then why not do it now! A tweet can take less than one minute but still make a huge impact :-)

Day 2: Plastic Free July 2014

More than 24 hours into Plastic Free July, and I’m resigned to the fact that this challenge is going to be more of a learning experience, than the huge achievement I envisaged that it would be, back in October, when I declared I was taking part.

It turns out that eliminating single use plastics is tough (as I always knew it would be), but for some reason, life hasn’t slowed down to enable me time to prepare all the plastic-free potions that I need… Preparation seems to be the key to going plastic-free and, unsurprisingly, the areas that I’ve been working hard on and blogged about, for the last nine months are where I’m doing best.

I’ve made a few changes to my daily routine that I hope will make a significant difference to my overall plastic consumption by the end of the month. I started both days with porridge instead of my plastic-wrapped cereal. I cracked open my new bamboo toothbrush (much better than the last one!) and tentatively opened the toothy tabs which are still, I’m sorry to report, absolutely disgusting. I’ve been using them every time I brush my teeth but I have to admit, I re-brushed with the plastic-clad minty stuff this morning because I knew I was going to be chatting to other people and I didn’t trust the toothy tabs to keep my breath fresh…this may of course be a misconception on my part.

I’ve swapped fruit juice from a carton with water or freshly squeezed orange juice. This is lovely but time consuming, especially as I end up having to squeeze oranges for the rest of the family too who love the stuff!

 

I’ve decided to ditch alcohol for the month, unless I can find some in plastic-free packaging. One exception is that I will allow myself to drink it when I’m out of the house, as long as it’s served to me plastic-free – feel free to share your thoughts with me as to whether or not you think this is cheating!

There was a last minute debate on Twitter with fellow plastic-free sympathisers about tea bags. Although these are available in plastic-free cardboard boxes, e.g. this one by Twinings…

…apparently have plastic in the actual bag! Oh no no, please no! See this post via Plastic Is Rubbish.

I am HATING this. I don’t like it because it’s a problem for Plastic Free July, but I actually really hate it because of the potential health implications. Does this mean that we are dissolving plastic into hot water and downing it with our daily cuppa? Does anyone have any further information on this?

Anyway, despite all of this, I haven’t managed to give up tea! I don’t feel that I’m ready to face the day without my hit of caffeine. Urgent action is required – I need to find somewhere that I can buy tea leaves without plastic packaging and the shop I go to for unpackaged goods doesn’t stock breakfast tea (can you even buy this as loose tea leaves?)

Finally, my theory for today is that the best way to consume less disposable plastics is to make food from scratch, so I’m working hard in the kitchen. It’s not been as bad as I thought to squeeze in a bit of extra cooking, but then again, it’s only Day 2 and I am still feeling enthusiastic!

Plastic-free Me: The (almost) plastic-free pizza

My bread maker turns one year old this week!

I know! You must all be thinking that it’s non-stop celebrating just now – what with me only having put the champagne away after my 100th post, just days ago 😉 What a crazy time!!

Anyway, I do think my bread maker deserves a post of its own. It was one of those pieces of kit that we debated over buying. I very much wanted one as I felt I needed more control over the ingredients that went into my bread (or rather, the bread that my children would eat – let’s face it, I’d not given a stuff about the rubbish that is in a supermarket loaf until my precious babies came along!) My other half agreed, but I knew we were both silently acknowledging that we’ve ebay-ed more almost-new stuff than we care to admit to, when the novelty has worn off.

Still, I really really thought we’d use it and – hooray! – for once I was right. That shiny new white appliance we brought home a year ago, now proudly sports smudges and grease from the number of loaves of bread it’s made (I estimate over 100).

It is a multi-talented monster of a machine, and, as well as making bread, it can also do marmalade, jam, cake mix and pizza dough. In my family, we all love the pizza it helps us to make. The other day, I wondered if it might help me to make a plastic-free pizza so that, if nothing else, we can have this delicious (and not entirely unhealthy) treat during Plastic Free July.

Once again however, I got close, but no cigar! I was beaten by some ‘plasticy’ materials in the packaging of some of the ingredients. Here’s what I used:

Dough
Water (tap)
Butter (paper and foil packaging, but there’s plastic in there, discovered when I soaked it and ripped it apart)
Sugar (paper bag)
Salt (this can be bought in exclusively cardboard packaging from Lidles, I believe – thanks @polytheenpam !)
Strong white bread flour (paper bag)
Fast action yeast (dubious foil bag which I am convinced has plastic in it)

Tomato sauce
Olive oil (I still haven’t been to the deli to buy this plastic-free, but I have time!)
Onion, garlic, fresh tomatoes (all plastic-free from my veg-box)
Tomato puree (glass jar, but plastic lid)
Caster sugar (paper bag)
Lemon juice (from lemon, bought loose)
Black pepper (bought in glass spice jar, but with plastic lid)

Topping
Cheese (I have yet to search out somewhere I can buy this packaging free, but I haven’t asked around – please leave a comment if you know anywhere in or around Edinburgh!)

I reckon I could easily ditch the pepper for July and even leave out the tomato puree if I chucked in a few more tomatoes and drained the excess juice off – what do you think?

This would be the plastic waste that would result:

A 20th of the yeast packet, a tbsp worth of the butter & quarter of the cheese wrapper

You can see from the photo that I teamed my pizza with sweetcorn from a clearly plastic-lined tin, so that will have to go too during July too!

Hmmm, maybe it’d be better to just go to Pizza Hut and not ask any questions!! 😉

Plastic-Free Me: The (almost) plastic-free fairy cake

In our house, we eat a lot of sweet things (well, the adults do!) As I have friends round for coffee and play regularly, there is always something just asking to be consumed…Things are going to have to change in July though as it’s not easy to find sweet treats that aren’t wrapped in at least one layer of plastic!

Just some of the biscuits in my cupboard!

 
Cutting sweet things out altogether isn’t an especially attractive option so I have no choice but to get baking!

I have limited time available at the moment for baking, so I tend to stick to favorite recipes that work, are fast, and that the children enjoy. Top of that list is fairy cakes. The recipe I use is this one from the BBC website which has never failed me (I ditch the vanilla extract and food colouring).

Yesterday I decided to work out if I could create a plastic free fairy cake. I didn’t quite manage it but I came close and, best of all, I can easily make a batch of 12 with significantly less plastic than the packaging of the biscuits I usually eat.

Of the ingredients in the recipe, the following are totally plastic-free :

• Self raising flour (paper bag)
• Caster sugar (paper bag)
• Eggs (cardboard egg box delivered in my veg box – we even return the egg boxes so that they can be reused)
• Water (from the tap!)
• Smarties (in a cardboard tube) I hadn’t thought of these yesterday but will use for decoration in July

Other ingredients that aren’t plastic-free:

• Milk (to be delivered in glass bottles during July, but a plastic lid is still involved I think)
• Butter (looks like it’s wrapped in foil and paper but I’m pretty sure from soaking it that there is a layer of plastic hidden in there!)
• Icing sugar (bought in a cardboard packet but again, from pulling it apart, I am highly suspicious of plastic content!)

Today I got my youngest child on board to assist. My kids adore making fairy cakes! For ages I innocently thought their motivation was the joy of creating, but I have since discovered it’s actually the joy of scraping the bowl. No matter – if there’s joy of some sort involved, it works for us all!

The first task for my little helper was to line the bun tray with my new silicon cake cases (zero waste!) Unfortunately though, I realised that 6 of the 12 cases still had residue on them from the last batch of cakes we made.

Check out those white flecks of cake gone by – yuk!

 

This was annoying as I’d washed and dried them thoroughly myself, so we substituted the dirty cases for their paper equivalents which were bought in a plastic packet.

I blame myself for impulse buying the (probably low quality) silicon cases for a mere £2 while standing in the queue at Hobbycraft! For paper cases that come in cardboard read this post on the Plastic Is Rubbish site. I will continue using the silicone ones though, I just have to be aware that they need a really really good scrub!

After some messy stirring, and a few rogue fingers in the mixture (not mine!), the cakes came out nicely and we enjoyed decorating them. I popped them in a tin to complement my plastic-free theme.

Okay, the tin looks a bit plastic-coated but it’s not single use plastic!

Here’s the plastic waste that resulted from making the fairy cakes:

Butter wrapper, milk carton lid, waxy paper icing sugar packet

Bare in mind though that I only used less than half of the packet of butter, a tenth of the icing sugar and just a glug of milk, so I would say that actually amounts to very little plastic! Consequently, that will reduce the amount of rubbish that goes into my bin for July which makes me happy…

Out of interest I also worked out the cost to see how they much they would cost. For 6, I estimate it would cost me around £1.15 (for the share of the ingredients). Not super-cheap if you compare the price to supermarket fairy cakes, but given that my milk and butter are organic and the eggs are free-range, organic and local, then it’s a price I’m happy to pay.

Can you help me perfect my plastic-free fairy cakes or perhaps suggest other cake recipes?

Plastic-free Me: Psyching up for Plastic Free July

Finally I’m getting my arse in gear for Plastic Free July! Time is running out so if I don’t get organised now then I won’t do as well as I’d like.

Yesterday I took a trip to the New Leaf Co-op to do another reccy so that I know what I can purchase from there next month (read my post on this amazing shop here).

I noted that they do Ecover refills for my non-bio laundry liquid (I’ve got as far as buying a few bottles of this stuff, but have not yet done the crucial refilling!)

I picked up some bar soap and a new bamboo toothbrush – a different brand this time (read this post on my past experience). It cost me £2.85 and the bamboo is biodegradable.

Back at home I got onto the internet and ordered some more Onyabags like this one (which unfolded is almost the size of a supermarket shopping bag).

Recently I’ve found myself in shops without a bag (bad planning!) and have had to either accept a plastic bag or carry items precariously in my arms – not easy when you have small children who need close supervision! I love Onya bags as they fold up small enough to tuck inside a pocket or attach to a keyring so with my new extras, I can now make sure I have one on me at any time.

I also bought myself a water bottle so that I have a drink handy when we’re out and about, in case plastic bottles or cartons that come with straws are my only option.

I then hopped over to Lush and bought the solid shampoo and conditioner bars I’ve written about so often, yet never tried. Plus I picked up some toothytabs – I went for a different flavour this time (I hated the last ones I bought!) – maybe I’ll get used to them after a month…

Last week I finally found the solution to plastic-free toilet paper thanks to @polytheenpam in the form of these tissues.

There is no plastic at all in the box so I will be popping them on top of the toilet for July. I so wish they weren’t bought at Tesco (even though they cost a mere 65p) as I’m trying to reduce my supermarket use. As I’m discovering all the time though, there are so many conflicts of interest with my environmental goals, so for July, I will prioritise being plastic-free but keep searching for the perfect plastic-free loo roll!

Finally, this morning on Twitter while browsing through the #PlasticFreeJuly hash tag, I was delighted to discover that Kake who tweets as @croydn has also committed to go as plastic free as possible in July – check out her blog post here. This was exciting as there are only three of us that I know in the UK taking part in the challenge (@ecothrifty & @polytheenpam) so welcome on board! Kake, and for anyone who wants to join in, cut down on your plastic use, or simply follow our progress, look out for the #pfjuk hash tag on Twitter.

Plastic-free Me: Not so much of the plastic-free…yet!

Okay, imagine Plastic Free July is a marathon and I’ve a month of training left to go. By this point I should be sticking to my training schedule, whizzing up nourishing but disgusting smoothies, breaking in my new hi-tech running shoes and pestering everyone I know for sponsorship.

If Plastic Free July was actually a marathon, I reckon I’m lying on the couch eating a Mars bar…but reading about running techniques! In other words, not a lot of preparation has been taking place but I’m thinking about it all in a positive manner…

To be fair, my heart’s in the right place but life has been hectic over the last few weeks. We’ve had four big events within the family that have required lots of planning and time. Life’s been great but reducing my single-use plastic has been low on the priority list. To make things worse, there’s been a distinct lack of cooking from scratch and quite a lot of grabbing treats and easy to prepare food. Here are two examples from tonight’s dinner:

Ready rolled pastry – can you see the sheet of plastic?

Plastic jelly pots (we used wasted four of these)

Life has calmed to some sort of normality so it’s time to get back on track. My next piece of writing will be a guest post over at Plastic Free UK (whose sister website Plastic Is Rubbish is an amazing resource, by the way) then I’ll be back on the blog limbering up for July!

Plastic-free Me: Sharing the love

I was surprised at the response to my last post. Not because it generated extraordinary huge amounts of traffic, nor because Plastic Free July phoned me to say that the challenge is far too difficult and they’re cancelling it (they didn’t, I may have dreamed that) but instead, because a significant number of people got in touch to help me.

Perhaps I’ve been sounding increasingly desperate about the whole thing and I’ve generated sympathy, but I had a couple of people tell me that they were inspired by the post, and a number of you were sharing your ideas for items I could use to help me with my Task List of steps towards my goal of being free of single-use plastics in July.

Thank you! As Enid Blyton might have said, I felt myself immediately buck up and was motivated to bloody well* get on with climbing this mountain!

Now I realise that not many of you are actually silly enough to have committed to Plastic Free July (just us then EcoThriftyLiving and TreadingMyOwnPath ?) but there is a big community within the blogosphere and on Twitter and Facebook, who are working hard towards reducing their waste and finding ways of living sustainably. This challenge therefore doesn’t feel like a lonely experience for me, and I’m really aware that we’re all learning from each other.

So in that spirit, I thought I’d collate and share some of the responses I’ve received. I’ll list the responses under the categories the advice came in:

Food
Zoe at EcoThrifyLiving had previously contacted me with her recipes for Yoghurt , Houmous and Peanut Butter

Rae from MyZeroWaste got in touch with a huge list of suggestions. Here they are:
• Roast dinner
• Cauliflower and broccoli cheese
• Bolognaise sauce, lasagne (if plastic-free pasta can be made or found)
• Pasties
• Quiche
• Stews, curries, casseroles
• Soups
• Fish from fishmonger, dipped in breadcrumbs
• Homemade pizza
• Jacket potatoes with various topings
• Houmous (homemade or bought in my own containers)
• Tuna & sweetcorn
• Curry
Phew! Perhaps I can eat during July afterall!!

Snacks on the go
Rae offered the following:
• Fruit that I’ve dehydrated myself (I’ve no idea how to do this, must check the internet!)
• Flapjacks/muffins
• Breadsticks or cheese straws
• Nuts, trailmix bought loose

Birthday presents
(By this point I’m wondering if Rae might consider a move to Scotland – I could do with her ideas on tap and a calming presence!)

She suggested I either give ‘experiences’ or homemade gifts of the edible variety. What I hadn’t said is that the presents were for children, but actually I think either might still work and would be a refreshing change from the plastic tat us parents are so used to reluctantly and begrudgingly allowing over our thresholds.

Shampoo and conditioner
This tweet from @nothingnew2013 made me smile:

And indeed Lush products seem like the way to go for plastic-free hair washing. Rae suggested buying clay in paper bags from Natural Spa Supplies which she describes as ‘wonderful stuff for skin and hair!’ Sounds amazing, I wonder if or how that would work by post?!

Silicon baking cases
@polytheenpam from Plastic is Rubbish has nailed this topic already in this great post. Congratulations on finding paper cases in a cardboard box by If You Care. I had given up on paper cases being an option as I’ve yet to see any that don’t come in those plastic tubs!

Lindsay at TreadingMyOwnPath also suggested If You Care and recommended them for their baking paper and FSC-certified rubber gloves, so it seems I can perhaps go wild in the kitchen this July!

Toilet roll
The big question, it seems, is do Andrex still do 2 rolls of toilet paper wrapped in paper and if so, where can we get them? A couple of people asked this. Are they the Scarlet Pimpernel of bathroom products?

Rae suggested:

‘Izal Medicated??!!’

Intrigued, I searched the internet and found some on ebay and beside it were phrases such as:
‘unopened boxes great vintage display item’
‘unopened RETRO 1970s’
‘Collectors Item’
‘WW2 TOILET ROLL – PART OF DAILY RATION KIT – ORIGINAL IZAL MEDICATED PAPER!’

A bit more trawling of the net suggests that Izal Medicated is no longer manufactured. I’m just not sure about actually using, what seem to be, the last few available rolls in the world. I know Plastic Free July is a good cause, but does it justify using some that survived from an original World War Two ration kit? Accuse me of lacking commitment…but it just doesn’t seem right!!!

Rae also went on to suggest ‘wee cloths’ or to go for the EcoThriftyLiving approach of using a bum gun. All good suggestions but I’m just not sure if I’m up to that much of a challenge!**

You know what? I think I’m going to look again at finding those Andrex two-packs!

Cooking oil
There were big discussions over Twitter about the best way to buy oil. A few of us use the enormous cans of Extra Virgin Olive Oil by Suma.

They have a plastic pouring lid though. What I needed to know is whether the can itself is lined with plastic. @SumaWholefoods was therefore dragged invited into the conversation. Here’s their response to the question of plastic lining.

If not perfect, it’s looking good… If anyone can shed more light on the situation, please get in touch. I do plan to operate on the can when it’s finished, but I reckon that’s not going to be until around 2015!

Bread maker ingredients
Loads of you contacted me on this point and everyone, ever so kindly, suggested I find a different recipe that doesn’t use skimmed milk! Oh yeah…I think I sometimes concentrate so hard on a problem that I don’t find what is actually quite an obvious suggestion. Thank you!

I was also sent a useful link by Alexandra Miller in the comments section of my post who signposted me to her plastic-free Facebook page. You can find the link here https://www.face book.com/groups/497501376937371/ (take out the space between face and book)

Then @sathlondonshona sent me the link to two interesting articles she’d found – the first was about ending your relationship with plastic (this scared me somewhat!) and the second was more inspirational!

I’ll end with a huge and heartfelt thank you to you all.

I’ve really got to stick this challenge out now, haven’t I? 

*I don’t think Enid Blyton would have said that
**Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m not up to that challenge 😉

Plastic-free Me: Keep on stepping

I’ll admit I’ve been overwhelmed at the enormity of Plastic Free July as a challenge since I switched my focus back to it after my supermarket-free posts. However, I think writing the last post helped me move forward, and a few days ago I grabbed my notebook and listed some areas I need to work on.

Within 10 minutes I’d filled a page of A5!

That feels okay though. It is good to have some tasks to work on. Because I’m a sucker for inspirational quotes, I rushed over to Pinterest to look up sayings about achieving goals to help me stay motivated. I quite liked this one:

To get through the hardest journey we need only take one step at a time, but we must keep on stepping. Chinese proverb

While I’m quite sure that a self-imposed challenge to reduce my single-use plastics doesn’t, strictly speaking, qualify as a ‘hardest journey’ (!), I liked the idea of taking one step at a time and that those steps must keep coming.

So far my ‘steps’ – or rather my tasks – look something like this:
• Food – this is worrying me but I’ll keep this bullet point simple! I need a collection of plastic-free recipes, and I aim to fill my freezer in June with plastic-free food so that some of the work is out of the way before the challenge has started.

• Drinks on the go – I need a suitable container for carrying water in case I can’t buy plastic-free refreshments when I’m out. I could also use a flask for hot drinks (although perhaps that’s not strictly necessary. It may just be because I’m lusting after this one by Orla Kiely!)

• Snacks on the go – I need to carry cutlery for cafes that only supply the plastic stuff, and I need to think about nourishing snacks I can keep in my bag (I am not someone who can cope without eating for long periods!)

• Carrier bags – although I have a wonderful collection of huge supermarket shopping bags, I really need more small bags that fold up to fit in my pocket like this one from Onya Bags.

I use these all of the time and I simply can’t run out in July.

• Birthday presents – I have at least two people who will need (plastic-free) birthday cards and presents in July. I’d like to buy and wrap them in June so that the job’s out of the way.

• Shampoo and conditioner – I need to buy plastic-free versions of these, ready for July. I expect they’ll have to be in bar form (like soap). I don’t think I’m even going to test them. I’m convinced they’ll not work at all on my hair-type so I’m not going to put myself through that pain earlier than I have to…

• Silicon baking cases – most of my edible treats will probably be home baked and, since I’m yet to find paper cake cases that come without disposable plastic packaging, now is the time to invest in reusables.

• Toilet roll – I already buy Ecoleaf toilet rolls that come in compostable packaging (yay!) but I buy them online in bulk and all of these compostable packets come wrapped in…plastic! Where you can buy plastic-free toilet paper? I’m not ready to give it up…

• Cooking oil – I need to get back along to a deli I found in Edinburgh that sells oil in refillable glass bottles and secure myself some.

• Bread maker ingredients – I finally found some supermarket-free skimmed milk powder but it comes in plastic. It’s a key ingredient, as is salt which is also plasticy and problematic. I need to look into them, although I think I’ve got everything else to make a zero waste loaf covered.

As if that wasn’t enough to be getting on with, those of you with good memories will remember that I wrote this post in January that included a ‘to do’ list. I’ve made some progress but the following is still outstanding:

• Medications – I still have to write to the suppliers of the medications that I take to find out if there are plastic-free alternatives. As I’ve said before, I don’t have any serious conditions, but I’m not prepared to have my health compromised for this challenge. If there are no alternatives then at least I’ll have registered an interest with the drugs companies.

• Make-up – I have lots of leads to follow for plastic-free make-up thanks to this post. Perhaps this task will be more of a pleasure than a chore!

• Junk mail – I need to write to all of the companies that send me unsolicited catalogues in plastic – or seal my letterbox!  I recently found this very useful post over at My Zero Waste.

No doubt there are more tasks yet to be added but this will keep me (very) busy at the moment. Now where shall I start…?