Reducing plastic usage

Caterina

That looks like a really comprehensive set of bags, Spendless! I saw the special offer one and was really tempted but I have so many fabric bags here that I decided to use them instead.

More plastic-wrapped lettuce bought this weekend, how annoying, but at least our veg delivery people do loose tomatoes so a Kg came in a paper bag, which I am very pleased about.

I have enough carrots and cabbage to make coleslaw and some sauerkraut now so no need for bought salad for a few days at least, and will look at alternatives too.

jackyann

About 5 years ago, we went on a xmas shopping trip to Oxford St ( usually go once a decade to see what's changed!). They were having a big drive to minimise plastic bags and all the retailers were asked to use paper (lovely, you can imagine, very classy bags)
However, it was pouring! Not drizzle, but drenching rain. So the staff were fishing out plastic bags for us - as I said, I wasn't paying for expensive items, just to get them ruined. No guilt, I have been using cloth bags for decades instead of plastic.

Fiftys1

Long time forum reader but this issue is very important so I have to join this chat.
I have been trying this for quite some time and have the same difficulties with eliminating single use plastic especially food packaging.
You can find a lot of inspiration and help if you read the 'plastic is rubbish' blog and zero waste home (Bea Johnson)
The old ways would be better -
Milk delivered in glass.
Take your own drinking cup instead of plastic or plastic lined single use cups
Your own bags - thankfully at long last England has the 5p charge
Take your own container to buy cheese, fish meat etc. My grandmother was able to buy cooked faggots in gravy at the local butchers many years ago but had to take a container.
No plastic bottled water.
Return glass bottles (collect deposit back) instead of recycling at the first instance.
There must be many more examples and these would provide additional jobs.
This would also improve litter issues and reduce costs to Local Authority waste collections.
It does feel good when you are about to put the fortnightly black landfill bin out and you can still see the bottom of the bin so can leave it until the next collection.

Caterina

Fiftys1 thank you for agreeing that this is an important issue, I feel quite strongly about it.

Although as you can see from previous posts I am still struggling to find alternatives, I really want to keep on until my plastic use is minimal.

I recognise that great feeling of an almost empty rubbish bin! Lately our rubbish consisted mostly of empty cat food pouches, non recyclable and the other problem was that after two days the bin stank so much that we had to chuck the bag half empty. Now I have started buying tins, which I wash before recycling, so my rubbish will become minimal.

fuddle

jackyann wrote: »

About 5 years ago, we went on a xmas shopping trip to Oxford St ( usually go once a decade to see what's changed!). They were having a big drive to minimise plastic bags and all the retailers were asked to use paper (lovely, you can imagine, very classy bags)
However, it was pouring! Not drizzle, but drenching rain. So the staff were fishing out plastic bags for us - as I said, I wasn't paying for expensive items, just to get them ruined. No guilt, I have been using cloth bags for decades instead of plastic.

I've been finding this issue myself with my cloth bag. The bag and all it's contents can come home wet through but it doesn't really matter as it's generally all wrapped in plastic anyway. :cool:

I was wondering about an oil cloth bag but wondered was it plastic too. I guess the clue is in the word oil. Although I see many ebay sellers with oil cloth in the title when delving deeper it's PVC. :cool:

Blue_Doggy

Fiftys1 wrote: »

L
Take your own container to buy cheese, fish meat etc. My grandmother was able to buy cooked faggots in gravy at the local butchers many years ago but had to take a container.

Do you actually do this yourself? If so, how do the shops react?

I'm wondering how it would work if everyone did it. Where does it sit within Health and Safety rules? If someone whose container was not properly washed did it and got ill, they could sue the shop which put the food into the container.

When you put your rubbish into your black bin, do you use a plastic bag, or do you do as we used to do, before plastic bags were around, and put it in loose (meat, fish and wet rubbish neatly wrapped in newspaper)?

Fiftys1

I have only tried this at my local butcher and it was no problem at all - does take a bit of courage I have to agree. However if it was the 'norm' it would be a lot easier and food has not always been sold in plastic bags (there was a way before our sterile very often double wrapped way of shopping). There are already a number of places that you can take your own containers for dry goods or buy loose using paper bags (e.g Wholefoods market, Unpackaged and many others) - more info on this can be found on the 'plastic is rubbish' blog. Look around and you will notice goods are sold loose in many places.


If you start to read more on the subject there is a lot going on - Bea Johnson has thousands of followers is an inspiration and has been on tour recently in Europe speaking at events (see 'zero waste home'). I am concerned about the environmental damage as well as the worry regarding chemicals and how it affects our health.


As for my black bin it is still mainly dry plastic wrappers or unrecyclable pieces of plastic. Food waste, (so wet items) where I live, is collected in a separate small black bin and can be wrapped in paper or the food caddy bags. After recycling paper, glass, tin, plastic, tetra etc the remaining waste is greatly reduced. I utilise any clean bag such as cereal packets, large toilet roll pack bags, bread bags etc. for the remaining unrecyclable waste. No pets or babies in nappies here which could possibly add more to our landfill waste. We are only two in the house now and in two weeks very often average 2 small bags of rubbish and that's not even a carrier bag size.
Plastic gets everywhere. However did we manage before plastic collars were put around glass jars?!! (Totally unnecessary)

Blue_Doggy

Fiftys1 wrote: »

I have only tried this at my local butcher and it was no problem at all - does take a bit of courage I have to agree. However if it was the 'norm' it would be a lot easier and food has not always been sold in plastic bags (there was a way before our sterile very often double wrapped way of shopping). There are already a number of places that you can take your own containers for dry goods or buy loose using paper bags (e.g Wholefoods market, Unpackaged and many others) - more info on this can be found on the 'plastic is rubbish' blog. Look around and you will notice goods are sold loose in many places.

I quite like having my food sterile - although butcher's paper (which is what used to be used before plastic became common) would be a better wrapping than plastic. I remember as a child being sent to the corner shop to get half a dozen eggs, which were put into a brown paper bag. Biscuits, too, could be bought loose and were put into paper bags - tins were only for Christmas, and the plastic tubes hadn't been invented.

What type of container do you use to collect your meat? I can't think of any non-plastic ones which are the both the right shape and have close-fitting lids. Sadly we don't have shops here (except greengrocers and bakers) which sell loose food, the ones you mention seem to be only in London. I have bought dog food loose from bins in pet supplies shops - sometimes it's come with added live protein :eek: so I hope food for humans is more ... vegan? However, by making my own bread or buying from local bakers I can avoid plastic bread bags; sadly the local greengrocer, while selling produce loose, provides only thin plastic bags instead of paper ones to put them in, hence I use zip-up reusable mesh vegetable bags.

Fiftys1 wrote: »

If you start to read more on the subject there is a lot going on - Bea Johnson has thousands of followers is an inspiration and has been on tour recently in Europe speaking at events (see 'zero waste home'). I am concerned about the environmental damage as well as the worry regarding chemicals and how it affects our health.

Gosh you're right, there are lots of blogs etc - however do you keep up with them all or work out which are good and which are not?

Fiftys1 wrote: »

As for my black bin it is still mainly dry plastic wrappers or unrecyclable pieces of plastic. Food waste, (so wet items) where I live, is collected in a separate small black bin and can be wrapped in paper or the food caddy bags. After recycling paper, glass, tin, plastic, tetra etc the remaining waste is greatly reduced. I utilise any clean bag such as cereal packets, large toilet roll pack bags, bread bags etc. for the remaining unrecyclable waste. No pets or babies in nappies here which could possibly add more to our landfill waste. We are only two in the house now and in two weeks very often average 2 small bags of rubbish and that's not even a carrier bag size.
Plastic gets everywhere. However did we manage before plastic collars were put around glass jars?!! (Totally unnecessary)

Our council does not collect food waste separately: vegetable waste goes into the compost heap, but meat or fish waste (mostly bones) can't be composted. The council is not very good, the only plastic they take is drinks bottles, and they collect no glass, that goes to one of several bottle banks dotted around the village. My black bin is never full, in fact if it weren't for attracting vermin it could easily go 6 weeks between collections. Unless I'm having a chuck-out, the same is true for the recycling bin, although there will be more now that our community centre have stopped having a paper collection bin.

Part of the problem is that so much plastic is not recyclable - a good move would be to make much more of it recyclable.

GreyQueen

As a passionate reducer and recycler (and a long-time reader of the ZeroWaste Home website), I'd like to weigh in with my two'pennorth.

I also work for one of the English local authorities as a customer service advisor and answer enquiries about waste and recycling, among many other things.

The trouble with a council gathering up materials for recycling is that they have to go somewhere once gathered. There has to be a market, and the facilities which turn post-consumer waste into reusable materials are not evenly distributed across the country. So, our experience as individuals hearing others complain that their local authorities don't collect X whereas some do, has probably got a very good reason behind it. You could try asking your council what it does with its paper, metals, plastics etc. They're going to be very motivated to avoid landfill taxes (and even if they are using incinerators, about one-third of the volume of waste is left behind as ash and that's going to landfill).

Also, for recycling to work, we as consumers of new things have to make certain choices. Are we as shoppers for paper products like loo rolls, kitchen rolls, printer paper (if applicable), envelopes, notebooks etc, choosing recycled over non-recycled? If we're not finding recycled products, are we talking to the shop/ emailing head office to say why don't you stock this, I want to buy it, and if you don't, my business goes elsewhere?

If we buy a new item sold in a box, are we going to complain to the store that it was held in polystrene packaging as opposed to shaped recycled paper pulp (like eggboxes)?

I'm personally producing one carrier bag of non-recyclable rubbish per month as a singleton household. This is something I hope to improve upon. I've also switched over to loose tea and when the clingfilm presently in the cupboard is used up, it won't be replaced.

A convo with my Magic Greengrocer last weekend was instructive. As a small family business with one employee, he doesn't have to charge for plastic bags. He has chosen to do so, and put up prominent signage, because customers were coming into his shop to buy one piece of fruit, taking a plastic bag saying they were doing so to use in the supermarket next door (!).

His shop has seen its plastic bag usage go down about 80% too, and he has saved £500 on plastic bags since the charge was introduced. I was absolutely fascinated.

I do have plastic containers for some storage, all of which were purchased secondhand from charity shops, including my 5 beloved L & Ls, but they weren't called into existance by my consumer choices, they were already out there. I shall not buy new ones from shops.

Blue_Doggy

GreyQueen wrote: »

The trouble with a council gathering up materials for recycling is that they have to go somewhere once gathered. There has to be a market, and the facilities which turn post-consumer waste into reusable materials are not evenly distributed across the country. So, our experience as individuals hearing others complain that their local authorities don't collect X whereas some do, has probably got a very good reason behind it. You could try asking your council what it does with its paper, metals, plastics etc. They're going to be very motivated to avoid landfill taxes (and even if they are using incinerators, about one-third of the volume of waste is left behind as ash and that's going to landfill).

This is why the parish council no longer has a paper bank - the market had fallen so that they were not getting any income from the waste paper. The next tier up, which collects the general wastes, sends the non-recyclables and "contaminated" recyclable wastes to incineration for electricity generation.

GreyQueen wrote: »

Also, for recycling to work, we as consumers of new things have to make certain choices. Are we as shoppers for paper products like loo rolls, kitchen rolls, printer paper (if applicable), envelopes, notebooks etc, choosing recycled over non-recycled? If we're not finding recycled products, are we talking to the shop/ emailing head office to say why don't you stock this, I want to buy it, and if you don't, my business goes elsewhere?

If we buy a new item sold in a box, are we going to complain to the store that it was held in polystrene packaging as opposed to shaped recycled paper pulp (like eggboxes)?

Other choices we have to make are the types of fibres in the fabrics we use - polyester, acrylic, and the other man-made fibres are all derived from oil and therefore a type of plastic. Which leaves wool and silk (not for vegans, and arguably silk not for vegetarians either), or cotton - balance the concerns with the amount of water used to produce it - or linen.

Recycled kitchen roll is something I don't always use, although I do keep some rolls for gross clean-ups (like canine accidents of various sorts).
I find the new sort lasts longer - typically 1) dry salad or fruit - I can get several goes of this, 2) mop up small spills from worktop, (several times if they're just tea or water), 3) use until it no longer holds together to wash dogs' dishes (usually lasts at least 14 washes) 4) use to mop up spills from floor. Drying the sheet in between of course. Recycled kitchen roll sheets typically last only about 3 uses before failing.

GreyQueen wrote: »

I'm personally producing one carrier bag of non-recyclable rubbish per month as a singleton household. This is something I hope to improve upon. I've also switched over to loose tea and when the clingfilm presently in the cupboard is used up, it won't be replaced.

A convo with my Magic Greengrocer last weekend was instructive. As a small family business with one employee, he doesn't have to charge for plastic bags. He has chosen to do so, and put up prominent signage, because customers were coming into his shop to buy one piece of fruit, taking a plastic bag saying they were doing so to use in the supermarket next door (!).

I do have plastic containers for some storage, all of which were purchased secondhand from charity shops, including my 5 beloved L & Ls, but they weren't called into existance by my consumer choices, they were already out there. I shall not buy new ones from shops.

People used to take their unwanted supermarket etc. carrier bags to our local greengrocer's for them to reuse for their customers. I haven't used clingfilm in ages, I store fridge food either in one of several old pottery bowls with an old plate or saucer on top, or in plastic boxes. I have a perforated lid for the microwave - it's plastic, but is wash and reuse over and over (25 years plus).