Plastic Free July
Throughout the month of July, guest writer Izzie Milligan (a communications manager for international re-wilding and wildlife conservation organisations) stopped purchasing products containing plastic. As a young professional living in London this threw up a number of challenges.; Cost, availability and carbon footprint trade offs to name but a few…
Why Did I Do It?
Making the decision to take part in Plastic Free July as a young person living in London wasn’t something that I gave much thought to ahead of time, in fact it was a pretty split-second choice I made on the 30th June. But what I lacked in time spent planning ahead, I had likely already made up for with a drive to adjust my lifestyle. Driven by shock at the severity of the plastic pollution pandemic and dismay at the inactivity of organisations and authorities, I figured it was worth the challenge to see if I could make some simple, sustainable changes myself.
The Problem With Plastic
Every day 22,000 tonnes of plastic enters the ocean. So in the time it’s taken you to read the first paragraph of this article, approximately 30-40 tons of plastic has entered the ocean. By the time you reach the end… that’s a lot of plastic.
That was the first fact about plastic pollution that I learnt whilst volunteering with my local Greenpeace group, a year or so after I first moved to London. After months of Saturdays spent collecting useless single-use plastic from supermarket shoppers and returning it to shop-floor staff, delivering letters of complaint to store managers on my way to work, and flyposting campaign materials across superstore exteriors late at night, our campaign began to trigger change. Slowly supermarkets began to announce their pledges to reduce useless single-use plastic, or remove it altogether.
Whilst the campaign didn’t bring about a completely plastic-free eutopia, what it taught me was that activism does affect change, even if it’s on a small scale. But more importantly, volunteering with Greenpeace taught me that if you want to see change, you can’t just expect it to come from the top levels of authority and wait for it to trickle down to you. You can make changes yourself by voting with your feet and your wallet in a way that brings about those changes you want to see.
Going Plastic Free for the whole of July was definitely a challenge - one that I have admittedly failed to totally maintain since the start of August - but also a worthwhile exercise in learning how to reduce plastic consumption, and be a more conscious consumer. If you are reading this then I take the liberty of assuming that you’re curious about doing the same, so I hope that this article provides you with the tools and encouragement to take a baby step outside your High Density Polyethylene-wrapped comfort zone and give reducing your plastic consumption a try.
Switching Up The Shopping List
One of the advantages (or disadvantages, depending on how you look at it) of taking part in Plastic Free July on a whim meant that I couldn’t bulk-buy items before running out of them. That meant having to think harder and do more research around buying things like groceries, toiletries, and - much to my housemates’ dismay - household items. Thankfully, alternatives do exist, and plastic-free loo roll isn’t that hard to come by so there weren’t any disasters…
Sadly, whilst shopping around for plastic-free alternatives worked for some items, others I had to stop buying altogether. Including chocolate, yoghurt, salad, cherry tomatoes, berries, frozen products, laundry detergent, toothpaste, hair products and deodorant, many everyday brands are still well behind the curve when it comes to helping their consumers help the planet.
Beyond cutting out products altogether, at times it was possible to browse a few brands in order to find one that didn’t use plastic packaging. An example (one for the ladies, sorry gents) would be period products which usually come with plastic applicators and wrappers galore. But short of going without (which whilst for some is liberating, for me isn’t something I’d be comfortable with), there are relatively few options that don’t involve plastic. Enter the menstrual cup, a silicone saviour which I now find way more convenient and comfortable, with the added bonus of not being packed full of nasty chemicals.
So browsing brands definitely helped my efforts, but I still caught myself a few times putting something into my basket before checking the label, only to begrudgingly plonk it back on the shelf. You think that things like crackers and biscuits in cardboard boxes are safe options, but often these sneaky snacks are individually wrapped in plastic inside the box - cheeky, and oh so pointless given that that packet of Ritz crackers wouldn’t have lasted more than 20 minutes with me and a pot of Pip & Nut so the issue of freshness never came into it anyway.
A Hard Nut To Crack
On the topic of peanut butter, as a complete fiend, I found saying “no” to a 1kg tub of Pip & Nut very hard, but the difficulties didn’t stop there.
Something that I still have yet to get my head around is why produce that comes with less or no packaging and therefore requires less manufacturing, costs more. Please someone explain to me the maths behind: cost of 6 apples + plastic bag < cost of 6 apples loose. I’m all for supporting organic farms and small businesses by shopping at a local farmers market, but when 50% of the world live on less than $2 a day, I think we can forgive the majority of people for plumping for the easier, cheaper option.
Ease and convenience were definitely two things that I had to get comfortable with sacrificing for the month of July. It was no longer possible to just “pop to the shops” to do a weekly haul, and instead I had to spend time planning ahead to think about what I was going to eat and where I was going to get it from.
My food shop went from being a 40 minute round-trip, to taking up most of the day. Starting from the kitchen table where I would meticulously meal-plan and plot a route between supermarkets each selling different plastic-free items, over to the farmers market where I would chat with (not rant to) local farm and small business owners about doing Plastic Free July, and onto the zero waste store praying all the way that I hadn’t forgotten my own containers, which I’m pleased to say I never did.
But the satisfaction of remembering to make a meal plan or take a homemade cup of coffee in a reusable mug on the train, was often outweighed by the frustration of having to make sacrifices elsewhere. For me that mug of coffee has milk in it, and as part of the wave of millenials/Gen Z’ers creating the recent 70% serge in alternative milk sales my choice is usually oat. But at £2.50 per glass bottle, enjoying a creamy latte on a whim was suddenly a much less appealing option. Thankfully an easy alternative is an old-school, tried and tested one delivered in the early hours of the morning by a dying breed: the milkman. I counted myself lucky not to be lactose intolerant until I learned the enormous carbon footprint that even organic, locally-sourced cows milk has in comparison to dairy free (and mostly plastic-plenty) alternatives.
What’s a conscious consumer to do?! It seems that you can’t win - by reducing your consumption of plastic can mean increasing your carbon footprint in other areas, for example by purchasing foods from farflung places or that contain products harmful to the environment.
Changing your habits to reduce your consumption of plastic isn’t impossible, but it is a privilege. The plastic-free lifestyle just isn’t an option for so many people because there are still too many barriers: time, cost, convenience to name just three. But in order to not discourage any curious or budding eco-warriors out there, I’m going to talk about what I’ve learned along the way.
Plastic-free August & beyond?
The biggest thing I learnt whilst taking part in Plastic Free July was that at this point in my life, going 100% plastic free is not an option. But the silver lining I realised is that it’s not about changing your entire lifestyle, behaviour and habits completely, overnight and forever. It’s about thinking that little bit harder about the impact of your purchase, and making good use of the power that you have as a consumer to create an impact by making small changes, gradually.
Going forward I will continue to avoid single-use plastic as much as possible. It’s a simple change to make: if a product isn’t in recyclable or refillable packaging (a growing trend for household items), then it’s made by a brand that I don’t want to support so I won’t give them my money. I will however give my money to brands that are trying to do their bit, and to whole or bulk food sellers that are a part of the plastic-free mission. And whilst this might mean having a slightly more convoluted route to complete a food shop, I want to continue to plan ahead by creating meal plans and shopping lists, which I’ve learnt is key for reducing not only plastic, but food waste too - gold stars all round.
Ultimately, when it comes to being a conscious consumer the high street is a labyrinthine minefield which is expensive and exhausting to navigate. But you’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it a thousand more times - one of them here: doing the right thing isn’t always easy. So don’t let a little inconvenience put you off making what could be a big difference to your life and to that of the planet. In the words of every Boomer’s favourite icon Greta Thunberg “no one is too small to make a difference”.
If you feel like getting rid of some unnecessary plastic in your life, you might find the below helpful as a start...
Where to buy:
Groceries
Superstores (for loose fruit/veg/tinned goods)
Toiletries
Household items