Plastic Free July is an annual campaign, which takes place in July each year. It aims to encourage people to stop using single use plastics. Things like disposable plastic straws, bags, bottles and plastic lined coffee cups. The idea is to swap them for alternative options e.g. reusables for the month of July. It was founded in 2011 and since then, millions of people have taken part.

What is a single use plastic?

A single use plastic is a plastic item which is designed for one use. For example a plastic straw is usually meant for using with one drink and then disposing of. Disposable plastic bottles are another example. Once you have drunk your drink the bottle will end up in the bin or the recycling.

What is a reusable item?

Reusable items can be used again and again. They can often replace the need for single use items. For example you can buy reusable drinking straws e.g. ones made of metal or sillicone . These can be useful for years. And they are easy to take out with you for when you might need a straw. There is also the option of not using a straw if you don’t need one. I invested in some reusable straws, but found that I rarely use them.

Who founded Plastic Free July?

Plastic Free July was founded by ‘Rebecca Prince-Ruiz (the founder of the Plastic Free Foundation) and a small team in local government in Western Australia’. You can find out more about this here: plasticfreejuly.org

Why should you go plastic free?

When we throw plastic away it doesn’t biodegrade. Instead it degrades, which means it breaks down into tiny pieces and gets into the food chain. This is a huge problem in our oceans, where plastic is accumulating at a frightening rate. It also means that there might be tiny bits of plastic in the fish that ends up our plates. This has added to my motivation to have a mostly plant based diet.

Is it possible to live without plastic?

Going entirely plastic free is not easy

I’ll be honest with you – going entirely plastic free is not easy. Plastic invades our every day lives in countless ways. Although it would be technically possible to live without it, most of us would find that a step too far.

• A large proportion of fabrics and soft furnishings contain synthetic fibres. Your sofa, carpet, clothes, shoes, cushions, curtains, towels and much more contain plastic
• Most of our appliances and devices contain plastic. Fancy living without your fridge freezer, washing machine, dishwasher, mobile phone, tablet or computer?
• Planes, buses, trains, bicycles, running gear and trainers all contain plastic. How would we get around if we refused all plastic right now?

Sometimes the alternatives are worse than using plastic (at the moment)

Even if we did decide to forgo all the things I mentioned above,

• Single use plastic can protect us from harm at times. In hospitals it can help restrict the spread of infection and disease. Some people need to use disposable straws because of an illness or disability.
• Food waste gives off methane in landfill. Methane is a greenhouse gas, far more potent than CO2. Some plastic food packaging is often specially designed to prolong the life of our food and reduce food waste.
• The carbon cost of using plastic packaging is lower than most alternative materials at the moment. This is true for plastic bags too. They have a lower carbon cost than paper bags and a much lower carbon cost than a cotton tote bag (cotton is also very pesticide and water intensive to grow). So unless we are careful we may be switching the plastic problem for other environmental problems.

The key to Plastic Free July, is not to avoid plastic altogether. It’s to focus on swapping the single use plastics for reusables where possible. Or if the product isn’t really necessary, we can just stop using it. Plus those reusables need to be long lasting, well looked after and reused and reused to get the environmental benefits from them.

How can you go plastic free?

Some quick tips to get you started:

• Start with the basics – straws, coffee cups, water bottles and plastic bags. Then once you have done that, move on to other areas.
• Think beyond just replacing plastic with any old plastic free alternative when you are making swaps. Do you really need the product at all? Would it be better to make use of what you already have before you get a replacement? Are the alternatives on offer actually going to be bettter for the environment?
• Don’t avoid plastic altogether, only do it when it makes sense to do so. We aren’t living in a world with perfect alternatives for every situation right now, so go easy on yourself!

Also, check out the Plastic Free July website. They have loads of tips and tricks on there. Sign up to their mailing list. During July each year they will send you a series of emails with tips for going plastic free.

Should you take the Plastic Free July Challenge?

I highly recommend it as a way to raise your awareness of the amount of single use plastic in your home. I first took part in 2014. Although I wasn’t ready to ditch plastic entirely afterwards, I made a lot of changes which have stuck with me for years afterwards.

Is taking part in Plastic Free July enough to solve our plastic problem?

I think Plastic Free July is a great introduction to the problem. But there is a lot of work to do! We need businesses, innovators, inventors, scientists, designers, engineers and more to come up with new materials and ways of doing things that can help us transition away from plastic to better alternatives. We also need to be careful about what we replace plastic with. It would be silly to replace one problem with another!

To find out about more campaigns and awareness dates like this, check out my post here: Environmental awareness dates.

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What are the alternatives to plastic packaging?

Last night a great new series started called War on Plastic with Hugh and Anita. I went onto Twitter afterwards. Lots of people were commenting things, like why can’t we use paper bags, or compostable packaging or glass bottles and tins instead of plastic? People know there must be alternatives to plastic packaging.

I think it is fantastic that the problem of plastic is being highlighted. Let’s not call to replace one problem with another though. Food waste was also not mentioned at all in the program.

Food Waste:

Firstly packing produce in plastic is done deliberately to extend the shelf life of a product. Sometimes it is filled with special gases, or given just the right amount of ventilation. It means that food can sit on the supermarket shelves longer before being sold and means less food waste at the supermarket end of things. If supermarkets got rid of this packaging, they would have to rethink how they keep food fresh. They would have to put less food out on the shelves. It would probably mean that they would need more regular deliveries and that the food wouldn’t last as long when it gets home. We might have to go shopping more often.

Not all produce needs the packaging though and sometimes there is some really unnecessary packaging e.g. when a fruit with a skin is peeled and then wrapped, or carrots are chopped and then packaged, or when there is more packaging than actually needed. So supermarkets should focus on reducing that first and we can chop our own carrots and peel our own fruit!

Also it would be great to have fairer priced unpackaged food in a wider range of options!

What is the problem with other packaging types?

Why can’t we just replace plastic with another type of material? Well anything we swap for is replacing one problem with another.

• Glass is made from sand, which is a finite resource.
• Compostable packaging is often only biodegradable in a commercial composter, not in your back garden and not in landfill as recently highlighted by the Telegraph.
• Paper bags are more energy intensive to produce than plastic ones and we have enough problems with deforestation already!
• Tins and cans are often plastic lined!

What to use instead of plastic?

What can we do instead? I think the best solution is to bring your reusable bags and containers. BUT they need to be long lasting and reused a lot of times. Take a look at this handy table which shows how many times different bags of diferent materials need reusing . It recommends avoiding organic cotton bags. They need reusing a whopping 20,000 times to compare with the ‘reuses necesssary to have the same cumulative environmental impact (water use, energy use, etc) as a classic plastic bag!’

*Ad* If you want to know more about how to save money and the environment check out my new book. It is also packed with tips on how to reduce the plastic in your life! https://ecothriftyliving.com/book

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Thanks for signing this petition, it will be so great if it is successful!

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1. I went to buy cheese recently and the guy who chopped it up for me hadn’t done it before. I told him I wanted the cheese chopped up and put into my reusable containers and just assumed he would know why as I was sure he had seen me in there loads of times asking for cheese. I took my eye off the ball while he was doing it though and when I turned back I saw that he had put a thin layer of plastic in the box with the cheese. When I asked him why the plastic was in there he had said that he didn’t want to touch the cheese and quickly whipped it out of the box telling me there was no plastic in it at all anymore. I tried to explain that I was trying to avoid plastic waste (should have done that to start with really) but he wasn’t having any of it, just wasn’t interested. He wouldn’t even let me pay him for the cheese, he gave it to someone else to charge me so that he didn’t have to deal with me any more!
2. I regularly go to a different butchers to buy a chicken. On this occasion I walked in with my large short handled saucepan (soup pan/ stock pot really), which is the perfect size and shape to first transport the chicken and then to store it in the fridge in.  I take it in a freezer bag and I have learned that it is easier to have the saucepan in the bag before the chicken goes in because it can be difficult to get the saucepan in afterwards as the lid isn’t fixed. So I went in there and the two guys behind the counter clocked me straight away. One went around the back and the other stayed where he was. I had my back to them trying to sort my saucepan out so the bag was tucked in under the handles, but the saucepan was still in it. I turned around to put it on the counter and before I could say a word the guy behind the counter whipped a chicken out of a plastic bag and put the chicken in the saucepan, then chucked the bag in the bin.  I think he thought if he did it quickly enough (even though I was standing right in front of him) I wouldn’t notice. Meanwhile the other guy came back with a unpackaged chicken that he got from the back for me. I said to the first guy – um did you just take that chicken out of a plastic bag. The second guy then started having a lighthearted go at the first guy – she only comes in here to do one thing, to buy an unpackaged chicken and you got it out of a plastic bag and I went to get her an unpackaged chicken!!! I was really impressed at this – usually I have to try to defend my request to not have packaging myself and the whole incident really made me laugh! I don’t think anyone is going to give me a chicken from a plastic bag in there again

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It was Zero Waste Week (sign up here for next year if you haven’t already) last week and although I really wanted to write about it during the week, I had a ridiculously busy week and just didn’t have time :(.

Freezer container problems:

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We are half way through July and up until now I haven’t even mentioned Plastic Free July (PFJ). The idea behind PFJ is to avoid all single use plastic throughout the month. Last year I started preparing for it months in advance and really tried my hardest (for more info about PFJ see here).

Plastic pollutes in so many way. Firstly it is made from fossil fuels, which need to extracted, transformed into plastic and then transported to where they are needed, with all the waste and pollution that goes along with that. Secondly during it’s use it may leach unpleasant chemicals into the foods and liquids we cover it with. Finally discarding the plastic causes yet more pollution – fish containing degraded plastic chemicals or exotic islands covered in plastic rubbish and dead animals appeal to anyone? Recycling can help but is not the ideal solution – at some point it will still need to be disposed of.

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It is day 8 of the Minimalism Game (read more here) and I have not followed the rules at all, but I did say I wasn’t going to. I have got rid of some stuff and I have been brave about chucking things in the bin more so than usual.  I have even replaced some of the really very knackered stuff around my house with new stuff and repurposed or chucked the old stuff e.g. my dish drainer – I’m ashamed to admit that I actually did a home exchange with it there and it is also rusted through and looking horrendous – it went in the bin (should it have gone in metal recycling?  It was covered in white plastic…).  I don’t know how many years we had it, but I honestly can’t remember the last time I bought one, we must have had it for years and years. I have also given some stuff away to a friend – some nappies we no longer need, a bath mitt and a kids rocking chair that my kids have grown out of.

1. To be recycled at the dump – an old electric toothbrush and razor and some bags of garden waste and some old frying pans
2. To be recycled at the supermarket – they recycle plastic bags and have fabric recycling bins in the car park (although fabric can also be recycled at the dump). Although I do most of my shopping plastic bag free, plastic bags still find their way into our home…
3. To be sold – I have a long list of things to be sold and need to get around to listing them for sale!
4. To be given away – I am hosting a clothes swap party next week and might try to give a few other bits and pieces away then. Otherwise it will be a trip to the charity shop or listing on Freecycle/ Freegle.

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• Peanut butter
• Honey
• Toothpaste
• Noodles
• Pasta 
• Milk
• Cheese (although I think I’ve sorted that one…)
• Frozen peas
• Rice cakes
• Rice
• Nuts
• Seeds
• Plastic stickers on fruit
• Porridge oats ( problem now resolved)
• Herbs and spices – often come in plastic bags even when in a cardboard box…
• Tinned sweetcorn (plastic lined possibly and multipacks come with plastic wrapping)
• Tinned tuna (plastic lined possibly and multipacks come with plastic wrapping)
• Tinned beans (plastic lined possibly and multipacks come with plastic wrapping)
• Dishwasher tablet wrappers
• White vinegar which comes in plastic bottles
• Nappies (although we are on our way to being finished with them soon(ish)
• Soy sauce (has plastic lids)
• Tomato puree tubes with plastic lids
• Passata jars which have metal lids (are they plastic lined?)
• Medicines

There are other plastics coming into my household from other members of the household (e.g. students/ my husband) such as

I am currently undertaking a Year of Eco Challenges . If you have a moment I would really appreciate it if you would consider sponsoring me with an action on my DoNation page. Also if you liked this post please click like on Facebook and follow on Twitter – thanks so much!

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