Trying to avoid buying plastic for the month of July is coming with its daily challenges as we use up household things that happen to come in plastic containers, and then realise that we can’t simply run out and buy more of the same. It’s an interesting process – self imposing a new discipline on oneself that creates some difficulties until you remind yourself of why you’re doing it in the first place and renew that conviction to find another way.
We share the washing up in our house and so it was a lottery as to who would use the last of the washing up liquid and who would then be faced with figuring out the replenishment plan. We ran out on day 2, a Saturday, and so Mrs Makedo had the pleasure of tackling Sunday night’s pile of dishes with only our trusty (non-plastic) loofah sponge, but with no suds to help. We had to wait until Mr Makedo went to Cork Monday morning, when he could stop into the Quay Coop to refill of “Ecover” washing-up liquid (Similarly for washing machine detergent by the way). Problem solved and another plastic bottle in the world avoided.
We are learning that running a home without brin
ging in plastic is challenging for sure, as plastic is by far the most pervasive packaging material in our lives. The chart shown (courtesy- Google) gives an indication of the relative size of different plastic waste streams in the U.S.
Unusual items will catch you out – for example, buying a Sunday paper meant that we couldn’t pick from the ones with the plastic wrapped magazines inside. Surely someone could figure a way to secure all the pieces of the Sunday Times together without having to wrap them in a plastic bag? That’s a lot of waste plastic every Sunday for little utility gain it seems, but as the marketers understand, it does give the feel of a quality product for some reason which may be why it’s done that way.
As a treat for our two girls, we gave them some Kinder chocolate eggs which a friend brought on a recent visit. Somehow forgetting they had stuff inside, we had some laugh when the plastic toys popped out. It was only day 3 and we were already getting caught out in so many places. Maybe the cute plastic toy will stay in use for the month of July so we don’t have to add it to our tally.
Later this week, having learned from our first mistakes, another treat for the kids took the form of a yoghurt in a glass jar which went down well and left behind a nice glass jar to be reused again.
We were also at a summer party at someone’s house over the weekend and as there were a lot of adults and kids to feed, the plastic knives, forks and cups were in circulation. It was a little disheartening until we saw them all being collected by our excellent hosts, in order to be washed and reused again at the next party.
We are compiling our list of sources for plastic free household options, and will post that shortly, to be updated as we go through the month.
In case you needed more data to inspire you, here are some rather disturbing facts about plastic waste: http://ecowatch.com/2014/04/07/22-facts-plastic-pollution-10-things-can-do-about-it/
- Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.
- 50 percent of the plastic we use, we use just once and throw away.
- Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the earth four times.
- We currently recover only five percent of the plastics we produce
