Reducing plastic usage

Spendless

Caterina wrote: »

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.

I really love my early Christmas present. The 'sticky' feel though not eliminated has reduced. Before this though I shoved all my accumulated plastic bags and cloth bags into a large one, I've found my plastic bags have gone into 'self destruct' mode. I also have a bad habit of just leaving my non-grocery items in the bags when I come home. Previously I could always identify where my stuff was by the shop logo on the carrier, once I started re-using bags, I never knew what I'd put where.:o

No reason why the more crafty/practical amongst you, can't create something along the same lines, it's just a shoulder bag that holds several fabric bags in varying sizes.

Whilst shopping in Home Bargains I saw they had a wooden broom for £1.99. It's not totally plastic free as there is a small amount inbetween handle and broom head but if anyone is looking to replace and reduce it's inexpensive.

GreyQueen

Linen is a good option but less popular in the modern era than easy-care fabrics.

Linen is made from the stem fibres of the flax plant, which for thousands of years has been the 'cotton' of the northern hemisphere, so much so that we still refer to bed linen, even though I suspect most of us have zero by the way of linen as bedsheets, duvet covers, tablecloths etc. We might have linen union teatowels, which are a cotton/ linen blend.

Linen has many virtues; renewable resource, long-lasting, stronger wet than dry, has a very attractive low sheen, excellent in hot temperatures, dyes well. It has a major disadvantage in that it creases easily and really needs ironing straight out of the washer in order to look decent.

There is also the option of viscose, which is made from wood fibres. There are environmental arguements against viscose, on grounds of energy expended in its manufacture, but it's another option.

However, what you will find if you dye a pure cotton garment youself is that the dye will not take on the stitching. This is because it's nearly always a polyester thread. Polyesters are dyed during the manufactuere of the filament from the oil, not made in a neutral shade and dyed after. Some home-dying anything made commercially will likely mean that you end up with a constrast stitching effect which may be undesirable.

Complicated, isn't it? Plastics are in the darndest of places.

greenbee

Other options for fabrics are bamboo and hemp. Cotton is one of the most ecologically unsound crops there is - it uses huge amounts of water and pesticides, and it is also associated with exploitative labour practices (as is much garment manufacture.

Careful thought is needed when looking to replace one product with another...

GreyQueen

greenbee wrote: »

Other options for fabrics are bamboo and hemp. Cotton is one of the most ecologically unsound crops there is - it uses huge amounts of water and pesticides, and it is also associated with exploitative labour practices (as is much garment manufacture.

Careful thought is needed when looking to replace one product with another...

Good reminder. I had forgotten about those two. Hemp is perfectly growable in the UK, although farmers have to put up with stupid pot-heads who think that the psychoactive versions will be outside by the acre (err, no, love). But with bamboo, you are then getting into bamboo miles, as it'll be shipped around the world.

Whenever I hear people refer to cotton as a cheap fabric, I flash on before and after pictures of the Aral Sea. It's only cheap because we can't see the true price.

Fiftys1

Blue Doggy - I agree butchers paper would be a more practical alternative than taking a container. I have a rectangular pyrex dish (sadly has a plastic lid) which I have taken to purchase chicken breasts, mince, sausages and chops for example. Another blogger does this (Zoe Morrison - 'Eco Thrifty') - she has taken a saucepan to her local butcher to purchase joints.
Watching Christmases past last night with the Bradshaws there was an example shown of a Turkey which appeared to be wrapped in muslin (which I guess may have bee washed and reused)
As for the blogs I have been reading these for quite some time and more if you are interested are:
My Zero Waste
Treading my own path
Eco Thrifty (as above)
Trash is for !!!!!!


Grey Queen - encouraged to see there are more people interested in this subject and your example of how little landfill waste you are producing. Your greengrocer is a great example to others and I am amazed at the financial benefits. It's surprising that more small businesses can't see this.

I agree with all of your concerns regarding the environmental issues around plastic fibres and these are also a problem in our carpets. I have stopped emptying the contents of my vacuum cleaner in the garden compost bin despite being advised that it is ok to do so. I no longer put tea bags in the compost as they also don't decompose (I do empty the tea leaves out and compost these and use a tea pot with loose tea as often as I can).

An even funnier You Tube song can be found on the 'plastic is rubbish' blog (sorry I'm not permitted to add a link yet.)
scroll down to the recent piece titled 'Happy Christmas'
Hilarious and very true.
Brings it home to you when you read that -
'Every piece of plastic ever made still exists'

Blue_Doggy

Grey Queen / Greenbee yes you're right about the other fibres, there's Tencel, too, which is made from cellulose (wood).
Someone must know why these fibres are not more widely used - not my sphere of knowledge and if I look it up now this reply won't get done before the Man in Red comes down the chimney.

Aral Sea RIP

Fiftys1 butcher's paper was good as far as it went, but you had to go to the butcher's last on your shopping round as if the meat (or fish) stayed in the paper too long, the moisture worked through and you could have a soggy or disintegrating package, and no nice clean paper for your child to draw on (I always liked Mum to buy sausages - they don't leak:D). You would, of course, use the paper as a fire-starter when laying your (open) fire.

Muslin or cheese cloth, yes you would wash and reuse that, use it to cover something that needed to "breathe" without dust or flies getting to it. Some of these things are why housework was a big task and being a housewife could be a full-time job.

Plastics aren't all evil. We have a need for light-weight, strong, flexible materials for the modern lives we lead. Plastics are waterproof, less breakable and less dangerous than the alternatives when broken - think of the old days when bathroom toiletries came in glass bottles (no squeezy convenience), and how nasty it can be to drop a slippery glass bottle of shampoo on a hard floor where you or your child may be wearing few or no clothes or shoes.

A lot of the work plastics now do used to be done by glass, metals or pottery - think cosmetics: your plastic lipstick tubes used to be made of metal, your face cream or foundation came in a glass or china pot, possibly in a squeezy metal tube. Other functions were performed by wood, horn, bone, ivory or whalebone. Waterproofing was achieved by using oilcloth (cotton or linen cloth soaked in boiled linseed oil with other ingredients) or rubber either on its own or as a layer of rubber with fabric, or by .

All these alternatives have both advantages and disadvantages, they may be more costly to produce and/or transport, and there may be ethical reasons not to use them.

Of course, the mouldability and readiness of plastics to take up bright colours has enabled manufacturers to produce endless amounts of "seasonal" tat.

It really comes down in the end, in my view, to valuing all the materials we use, including plastics, and not just discarding them. After all, even the supermarket carrier bag is not in itself evil - a fairly strong, lightweight, waterproof item - it's careless humans treating it with contempt and not reusing it which causes the problems.

sistercas

I take a plastic tub to the butchers which isn't ideal I know, but I figure it keeps the tub out of landfill. I've had the tubs for years and will continue to use them for as long as I can, glass for me isn't practical to take out of the house as I am a clumsy lump at times

I see a huge problem where I work (nhs) the amount of paper we go through is incredible and it all has to be shredded for confidentiality , we are supposed to be paper light , paper light my @rse there are mounds and mounds of it .:eek:

Fiftys1

Definitely too much 'seasonal tat' and loads of it currently on a neighbouring house in my street lighting up the whole town. Could give Blackpool a run for it's money!!

Just purchases 2 new led light bulbs with a fifteen year life guarantee. However the tough plastic they were encased in no doubt has an infinite guarantee! (Purchased by OH - apparently no option in a cardboard box!!)

greenbee

It's just come up on another thread, but sanitary products often contain plastics. If you want plastic free, but don't want to go down the reusable (mooncup, washable pads) route, then try http://www.natracare.com/

Caterina

just been on the Plasticisrubbish website and found this petition:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/en-gb/528/269/998/keep-the-glass/?taf_id=13905211&cid=fb_na

I have recently posted about this in the forum, so am going to go and quickly update it with the petition too!