Plastic Free July - ten years of tips and information!

Resuable containers and drink bottles

If you analyse your plastic waste and find a lot of throwaway containers and bottles, plastic wrap and freezer bags, then you should consider some resuable options.  Pete and I have got into the habit of putting food in the reusable containers rather than covering with wrap or putting it in a bag.  

We have lots of containers, so there is never an excuse.  We also got some nice glass containers for our lunches.  At work the other day someone was looking for plastic wrap to cover some leftovers and I suggested that they put a bowl over the plate, they were amazed at my creativity, but that's the kind of thing we do all the time at home.  

We still use a few old Tuperware containers for storing fruit and veges, but all hot food goes into glass containers (due to the risk of chemicals in the plastic leaching into hot food). We've had Pyrex dishes for a while, and I recently got a set of Glasslock containers from Biome (affiliate link).  As well as reducing waste (and not buying Gladwrap for 5 years!), this reduces our exposure to plastic additives which are known hormone disruptors.  

Its taken a while to get to this stage, because the glass containers are expensive, but I've gradually built up enough to keep most food in glass.

You can also buy or make resuable wraps from fabric and beeswax.  Beeswax food wraps are also from Biome Ecostores (affiliate link). I also learnt to make beeswax wraps, which you can read about here.

I usually fill a drink bottle of water to take in the car whenever we leave home, so we never have to buy a drink in a bottle (we have a Klean Kanteen bottle each - affiliate link).  At work I always use a real cup, even when disposable cups are available.  If you are a coffee drinker, consider taking your own cup instead of getting a takeaway cup that you just have to throw "away".  Personally I love the glass reusable cups from Biome (affiliate link).

Buying in bulk and making your own

Most of our plastic waste previously was food packaging.  Buying in bulk is one way to reduce the amount of packaging. Selecting carefully at the supermarket and trying to find options with no or less plastic is another strategy. By far the best option is making your own as you need it.  

We are lucky to avoid milk bottles, bread bags, veggie packaging and various others, by making and growing our own.  One thing that does not reduce plastic is butchering our own meat, as we wrap it all in bags before freezing, but if you buy meat you can take your own container to the butcher and ask to use that instead of bags.  A tip from NZ Ecochick - you can also buy cheese from a deli and take your own reusable container.
 

Bring your own reusable bags

We have made a real effort to take our own bags and to refuse plastic bags (this is half the battle, saying "I don't need a bag" in time!).  We have got so good at taking our own shopping bags to the supermarket that I occasionally accept a plastic bag just so we have some at home for the occasional time that you need one!  Our secret is to put them by the door, a few in my bag and some in each car, that way, you can at least put the majority of shopping in reusable bags.  

So get yourself lots of bags, put them in a sensible place and remember them!  Also, tip from Fiona from Life at Arbordale Farm - if you forget them in the supermarket, but they are in your car, you can always load everything in your trolley and pack your groceries in the bags when you get back to your car, you won't forget again after that ordeal!  

As well as the standard heavy duty big bags, I also have some light-weight bags to use for fruit and veges (you can find a range of produce bags at Biome - affiliate link).  Finally, if you're stuck for a bag, you can make one from square piece of fabric.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

From July 2014 South Burnett Regional Council area stopped curb-side collection of recycling, its all going to landfill.  Not to recycling at the landfill either, we don't even have the option to take our own recycling to the tip, there is simply no facility for it. Essentially our council tricked us into this change.  They sent out a survey and asked if we wanted to pay extra for another bin for recycling.  We were happy with our one split bin - half for rubbish and half for recycling.

Unfortunately the options weren't well explained, and our region didn't vote for the second bin, our council is now only providing one bin for rubbish, no more split bin.  Apparently they are now "looking into" providing recycling facilities at our landfills, but at the moment there is no local recycling options.   

image source

As much as I did like the convenience of recycling, in some ways, having that option taken away does encourage some greater creativity. Even though it might feel virtuous to put plastic in a recycling bin, in truth we are only ever downcycling (reducing the value of the material), so thinking of solutions to reduce or reuse plastic is better than recycling.  

Of course, we are going to find that some plastic is unavoidable, and I was quite surprised to see a bin at Coles in Brisbane CBD for recycling thin plastic wrapping (as explained recently by Fiona from Life at Arbordale Farm), and the rest I can put in recycling bins at work.  I'm going to have to remember to cart it around, so ideally we will keep recycling to a minimum.

Plastic Free cleaning ideas

For the dishes, we use homemade soap in a soap shaker, but we do keep some detergent for really greasy dishes and for cleaning the milking machine.

In the laundry, I have been using soap nuts, and recently I also made some soapwort liquid.

a bag of soap nuts

What's in our dilemma bag?

Wait, what's a dilemma bag?  For the month of July, you keep all the single-use plastic that comes through your house in a bag and go through it to think about how you could further reduce plastic waste.  This is my dilemma bag from 2015:

I feel like we did worse than last year.... the photos don't show every piece of plastic, but it is a representative sample of plastic that we ended up with in July....