2 Weeks After the Experiment and The To Keep List

So after attempting to go disposable plastic free for 1 month, I can tell you that it really wasn’t easy and doing it strictly would not be for the large majority of people; however there are things we can all do to help reduce our usage of these plastics, and if we all do what we can than that will certainly help our planet (and us!).

A list of things I will be 100% keeping after this month include:

•        Reusable water bottles – metal and insulated ones/
•      Paper bags – for fruit/veg/bread shopping, good for sandwiches too.
•      Ecoleaf toilet rolls/kitchen rolls – wrapped in potato starch instead of plastic and 100% recycled too.
•      Milk – Glass bottles (mine from Dawlicious local jersey farm and is delicious!) but milkman is a great idea.
•      Lush products – shampoo bars, conditioner bar (great for shaving with), toothpaste powder, deodorant bar). Take the pots back clean and they 100% recycle the pots themselves into new pots for the stores and take back 5 for a free face mask!
•      Reusable shopping bags – cloth bags and my amazing ones made from old t-shirts and jeans.
•      Natracare tampons – 100% cotton, wrapped in paper and come in a cardboard box.

Things that I will attempt to upkeep wherever I can and where possible are:

•      Refill products – Wherever I can I will aim to get refills of rice, pulses, pasta (if I can find a cheaper alternative to Planet Organic), dried fruits, nuts, oils and vinegars.
•      Butchers and fishmongers – I will be shopping much more at my local butcher (I seem to have a bit of a name for myself in there now, so I feel more accepted!). However it may not be possible all of the time.
•      Bread - Aiming to get my bread from the bakers or Lidl that have fresh loaves (however it doesn’t last long, so I may not always use this).
•      Metal Straws / non-plastic straws – I will try where possible, the metal straws are great, but I’d recommend buying paper straws or bamboo straws if you plan on drinking alcohol.
•      Homemade chips – will look into a chip cutter that my friend has to aid me making my own, but again it needs prep time which I don’t always have.
•      Homemade crisps – they are great, but not convenient, so will make them as a treat as I do not have the time to make them.
•      Clothes – I aim to look into clothes that are 100% cotton and organic, however for some things you cannot get 100% cotton and money wise, may not always be the best option.
•      Metal safety razor – I’m still trialling the razor I bought, but I do see me using this in future. 

And finally things that just aren’t feasible for me to keep after this month’s challenge:

•      Planet organic and farm shops – might be good for a few things, but very expensive and out of my way.
•      Cereal – for me there is no substitute to shop bought cereal, but I’ll keep looking. At least you can recycle the plastic packets at supermarkets though!
•      Sunscreen – Lush do sunscreen, but I haven’t tried it yet, so maybe in future, but for now I’ll stick with the lotion.
•      Bamboo toothbrush – a bit painful to use, kept hurting myself with the wooden handle on my wisdom tooth and the bristles are plastic anyway.
•      Crisps and Biscuits – It is too time consuming to keep making these, and I personally cannot give these up.
•       Internet shopping – sometimes a lot of plastic involved, but I will be trying to ask suppliers not to use It where possible – however I will not be stopping ordering online.

So that’s my month in a nutshell really, there’s a lot I will keep and maybe some I haven’t mentioned too. I suggest if you are environment and animal conscious that you look at your own usages to see where you can cut back and remove plastic too. If we all do a little then that’s a start! I hope to have been of some inspiration and I wish you luck in your own plastic free endeavours.

As always, thank you for reading!

Day 27 - Even the clothes too!?

Day 27

So you might be thinking, oh she's going to mention trying to buy clothes without the little plastic tags on them, maybe finding ones with fabric tags tied on with string? Actually that is the least of our worries where clothes are concerned!
After a small amount of research I have recently found that the single biggest problem for plastics in the environment/ in our seas actually derives from microfibers which comes from our poor clothing choices. Polyester, nylon, acrylic or elastane/spandex clothes are all made up of small microfibers of plastic that most of us (me up until recently) wouldn't have even guessed were a problem. According to research, a single piece of synthetic clothing can release 1,900 microfibers each time that it is washed, and once washed this then makes its way down the drains and into our waterways, making it into our rivers, lakes and then the ocean. Ecologist Mark Browne released a paper back in 2011 warning of his findings of how many of these microfibers are making their way into our water bodies and how dangerous they are to our environment and our lives in the future.

Below is an extract from an article by Abigail Barrows regarding the plastic clothing issues and shows some alarming statistics into the true nature of the problem, and how much of these can be attributed to clothing.

Unfortunately the plastics business within the clothing industry seems to be an integral part of day to day manufacturing, but there are still some ways of potentially getting around this issue. If you opt in for natural fibers such as cotton, wool, hemp, silk and bamboo then generally these clothes will usually last you longer because they won't be shedding a tonne of plastic which would degrade the material over time and you wouldn't be contributing to the microfibers entering our environment unnecessarily. However generally more sustainable clothing can be expensive, depending on where you go, but it is possible if you shop around to find clothes that aren't ridiculously expensive and especially if you surf the sales. Two other options to overcome this problem, one is shopping in charity shops (not everyone likes them, but i have never had a problem with this) you can look for natural fiber materials and get a decent price on some pretty decent clothes. Option number 2 is not for everyone, (and not exactly one that i would currently be very good at) but making your own clothes would ensure you can get the materials you require plastic free and you would have your own custom items of clothes to wear. I'm considering trying to find a course that'll teach me in these ways, so I can in future try my hand at my very own clothes design, but this would take some time and trial and error. So for now i think i'll be sticking with trying to source cotton and natural clothing.

As well as this, there are companies trying to create clothes out of 100% recycled plastics from our ocean debris, however I'm not happy with this, because it seems to me that this isn't helping the cause it is just dealing with the aftermath. That piece of clothing will then shed more microfibers into the ocean, and once the clothing is no longer usable it will then inevitably end up in the environment again. More pressure should be put on government to reduce the plastics within all of our industries including the clothing one, because if you don't get to the source of the issue, then the demand will keep rising and it will be ever harder to reduce these in the future.

A shocking revelation and not one I expected to find, but that is what this journey has been all about!

Until next time.

Thanks for reading.

Day 26 - Make-up and Plastic tags

Day 26

I'm not the kind of person to use a lot of make up, I've always had issues trying to use anything like foundation or anything on my face, where it just goes oily or too dry and it just looks awful. So all I actually use is liquid eyeliner and mascara (and I don't use these all the time, especially when having to go to work). But pretty much all make up these days seems to come in plastic and I don't think there a 100% way of getting around that unfortunately. Jumping on the Lush bandwagon again, I do know that they will recycle their tops to their liquid eyeliners, which leaves the glass bottom able to be recycled in your home recycling.  They also do eye shadow blocks which come without packaging, and can be applied with a brush. But most other places do not seem to do make up minus the packing, so I think for anyone big on their makeup, it might be a difficult one to either give up or just accept that you will be wasting that plastic. It's a shame, but not much we can do unfortunately.

Plastic tags, i recently have bought some vegetables/ fruit from the supermarket or even from smaller shops, to find they have attached a completely plastic label, which in my mind is completely unnecessary. I realise it's probably to stop the paper from scrunching or falling apart in transit, but surely there's a better way to do it? Like wax paper or something? It's just annoying seeing a completely unpackaged item to then find this attached, it's ridiculous. Some stickers on fruit and veg are exactly the same too, and should be unnecessary too. Sometimes it's these little things, that seem to just add to the madness of the plastic soup that we seem to be swimming in!

Only a short one tonight i'm afraid.

Thanks for reading!

Day 25 - Lush Visit and Market Stall Food

Day 25

One of things I've found difficult to find at the moment is a good alternative to my face moisturiser. I usually use the Nivea Soft moisturiser which seems to be the only one that doesn't upset my sensitive skin, and I figured i'd find it hard to find any moisturiser not contained within plastic. Where this is true, as I have recently discovered the amazing thing that Lush recycle their pots when you take them back to the shop, it meant I could actually get some from Lush and know i'm not going to be impacting anything since it would be then reused for future Lush pots. So I had a half day at work and set off to the Oxford Circus shop in central London. Luckily this shop is 3 floors worth of amazing Lush goodness and there was a lot of choice for everything. There were also a mass of staff, all friendly and all on hand to help you with choosing the right products for your needs and your skin type. I went straight for looking at the moisturisers and was almost instantly asked if I needed help by one of the shop assistants. I explained to her what I wanted, and so she asked me to take a seat at a table, which had a chair either side and a big bowl of water in the middle. After a couple of minutes she returned with a few facial cleansers, rose water and a variety of moisturisers. She took my hands, washed one at a time, cleansed them, and then moisturised them for me. It was really quite nice as it was like a light hand massage and then with the moisturisers on then felt all silky and smooth.  I explained to her that my face is way more sensitive than my hands and I would need to try them on my face before i buy them. She then said she'd put all the moisturisers we'd trialed into a few sample pots (which can be taken back for recycling) so i could try them at home and then make a decision based on how much i and my skin likes them. I was very happy with this because in the past i have bought things for my face which really haven't been right and i end up with a whole tub of product which is not suitable for my skin. After this I explained that the last deoderant bar I bought from them was too rough and irritable for my skin, so she recommended this smooth deoderant bar and gave me a rather generous sample of that to take home too. I said thank you and carried on looking around the shop and then started talking to a guy about the toothpaste options they have. I have tried one of the toothpaste tablets and one of their toothpaste powders already but wanted to try some other options. They had 2 more tooth powders available, one I refused because it was peppery and I'm really not keen on pepper, and the other one was mixed with mint and wasabi (which i declined straight away as I also don't like wasabi). However the guy explained to me that he also does not like wasabi, but he assured me it was nice, so he gave me a sample of this and 2 of the toothpaste tablets to try at home. I was also looking for a decent alternative to shower gel (but i didn't want to buy the bottles, i was looking for something in the pots that Lush recycle or in bar form). I have used a sugar scrub before from there, however it was a bit rough for my skin, and a bit itchy after. Lush also do jellies which are shower gel in a jelly ball, which you rub on your skin the shower and it lathers up. It sounds cool, but I couldn't find one with a scent that I could get along with, and they left my skin feeling a bit squeaky and not very moisturised so I decided to keep looking. They do roulade bars and scrubs, but I feel I need to go back and get a trial of a couple of those, because i wasn't keen on the smells of those either, but i'll try them and see if they work. So i walked out of Lush with a lot of exciting samples to try and I can say now that I am completely sold on the UltraBlast Tooth Powder (The wasabi one!) and it's so refreshing for my mouth and not spicy one bit! I am also sold on their Aqua Marina face cleanser which has a clay feel and contains seaweed too, it made my skin feel nice. The moisturisers i'm still trialing. My favourites so far are the Celestial and the Vanishing Cream, but I still have three more to true (though 2 of them are rather bloody expensive, so  I won't buy those because I cannot afford that amount on a moisturiser). Overall though, i'm definitely sold on Lush and I recommend that if you care about animals or the environment, just look them up online and see for yourself.

For food on the go, i've been moving away from general shops/ supermarket stops, and whenever i'm around somewhere with some market food i'll tend to buy from these instead. I'm lucky that I work so close to Camden Town market, as there is a huge variety of market stalls with a nice variety of food from around the world. A lot of the stalls also supply their food in cardboard tubs, or paper wrap with wooden forks and generally if you scope out the stall before hand, you can see what they'll be packaging your food up in before you buy so you can make an informed choice. I had some lovely mac and cheese the other day just before I went to Lush which was well worth the slight detour to ensure my lunch would be plastic free. Sometimes you do have to go a little out of your way, but in my opinion it really wasn't much of an issue. And it was nice to walk along the canal to get there too. The only downside was the tourists - SO MANY! But all in all, much better choice and selection than if I had gone to a supermarket.

Anyhow, until next time.

Thanks for reading.

Day 24 - Stale Bread and Crisp Trial

Day 24

Doing this challenge has led me to confront the issue of stale bread, which is something that rarely happens with shop bought bread such as hovis, warburtons etc because it seems to go mouldy instead of stale. Since i've been buying loaves of bakery bread, it's made me realise how long bread really should last when it's fresh and how many preservatives must be in the other bread you can buy. So recently, everytime I have bought a loaf of bread, it has lasted 3 days max before it ends up going hard around the edges and ridiculously tough and chewy. Now, I mentioned this to my parents and they said I should make good old bread and butter pudding (why did i not think of this sooner!). Bread and butter pudding is a traditional english pudding designed to use up stale bread, butter and any currents/ dried fruit left over. The basic idea of it is to slice up the stale bread, lay it in a oven dish with currents/sultanas/dried fruit inbetween the layers, cover with a mix of milk, cream and eggs beaten together with a little nutmeg and vanilla extract and then leave to soak for a couple of hours before cooking in the oven. This makes a lovely dessert that you can have with cream, custard or ice cream. Mmmmm. I recommend trying it and it does save that last bit of bread unused bread.

If anyone is interested, we swear by this recipe (though my dad would argue to triple the amount of fruit suggested).
https://www.cookipedia.co.uk/recipes_wiki/Mrs_Beeton's_bread_and_butter_pudding

I tried the microwave method of making my own crisps as suggested by a friend of mine. I followed the instructions, I cut the potatoes very thin, coated with oil and a little salt and put them on a plate in the microwave. It said to cook them for 3-5 minutes, however I did not find this worked all that well. After about 8 minutes of them being a little crisp, but still soggy, i decided to put them in the oven to finish them off. They turned out great but my words of wisdom is to watch them like a hawk! Otherwise you'll end up with some seriously black and inedible crisps. I tried this with both normal potato and sweet potato and they both worked out great. My mum can vouch for this, because I took them with me in a container to the hospital to see my mum and she loved them so much that she ended up eating the entire box in like 5 minutes.  Compliments to the chef indeed. Sooo I'm guna have to make more. But glad they were enjoyed either way!

Anyhow until next time.

Thanks for reading!

Day 23 - Hospitals and Travelling

Day 23

Just a short one today as my mum has been in hospital, and i don't have a huge amount of time. But yes, hospitals. Whilst waiting in A&E for about 5 hours, you tend to get thirsty/hungry and unfortunately there didn't seem to be a place for me to get anything to eat that wasn't plastered in plastic. Our options were a coffee machine, a drinks machine (luckily with some cans, but only fizzy drinks) and another vending machine with crisps, chocolate etc. It was annoying because some hospitals do have small cafes, or even something like a costa, but where we were in the hospital we didn't have much choice of what to have, and all was stuck in plastic. Annoying for me, as i was not prepared for the visit obviously, and then had to deal with being tired/ hungry and worried. I did buy a drink and something from the vending machine. Unfortunately I did not want a fizzy drink and then ended up getting orange juice in a plastic bottle because i needed something. Not ideal but not much i could have done about it. I know hospitals have a mass of waste anyway, with the amount of single use plastics they must get through, but it's just annoying that it's the same on the food side of things too.

So my usual grocery shop would have meant I go to one or maybe two big supermarkets to get all of my food from them. However since I am avoiding the supermarkets now, it does mean I have to go from shop to shop to get everything i need which means a lot more travelling around. Fortunately i have a lot of it close by, but it does still mean carrying everything from shop to shop in an attempt to get everything I need. For most, this would not be ideal, especially those with kids or mobility issues. I'm lucky to have a car, but then what is the damage to the environment of having to drive everywhere for my food? I can't decide whether any of it balances out or not really, but travel time definitely is an issue.  I can no longer just pop up the shop for bread/ milk, and it's beginning to really take a toll on my life with spending more time going to get food, than i have to prepare it. It's definitely a problem. Though at the moment i do work long hours, i am doing a full time course outside of work, i have animals to look after at home and obviously a life to try to uphold, so at the moment this is not a great thing to have to spend time doing. Something to consider if you're thinking about doing this!

Anyhow, until next time.

Thanks for reading.

Day 22 - Lush Recycling and SLS Free Products

Day 22

So as i'm going plastic free, you may have read a previous blog of mine being a tad peeved at Lush having a lot of their products produced in plastic pots, which I did refuse to buy on the principle that they were in plastic... However, after more research into the matter, i have found Lush to be a much better company than I previously had thought.

It turns out that the black plastic pots that Lush make to sell their products in, can actually be returned to the shop for recycling back at their factories. The tops of the pots state if you return 5 full size black pots into Lush, then you receive a free fresh face mask, which is great, but they don't only recycle the large black pots. Even though you will not receive anything in return, you can take back all pots, even the small pots, clear or different coloured pots used for toothpaste powders or moisturisers etc, they accept the lids to their makeup and the small sample pots back too. You do have to ensure that they are 100% clean before returning, but this a small thing to do to ensure you can have a closed loop system back with the supplier and therefore not just throwing it in the bin or recycling at home. Lush have a fantastic video which shows you exactly what they do with their pots, which includes grinding them up, sometimes dying them black, reheating them and then remoulding back into new pots. So for me, this is a fantastic idea, because it means I can actually buy moisturiser for my face, without worrying that the pot might end up in landfill. I can take all of my pots back and be assured they will then end up back as more pots in the future for me to then purchase again. Truly I take hat off to you guys as more companies should be caring enough to offer this service! So since the plastic will not be thrown away, I would consider these Lush products as something safe for me to buy, as I know they will be responsibly handled once I return them.
So anyone out here, if you buy from Lush, please return your pots!

If anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUmfeOqVXVg

SLS free products, so in my search for plastic free shampoo I previously found the shampoo bars from  Lush, which are sold like a bar of soap and then they get wrapped in paper which was excellent. However, I have a very sensitive scalp, which dries out very easily and gets all flaky (which is caused by psoriasis) and for years of using standard shampoos and conditioners, it's rarely helped the situation. I have been trialing the shampoo/conditioner bars from Lush in the past few weeks, however I have found my scalp to actually be a bit drier and more itchy, and so I decided to look into what might be good for my scalp. It appears that a lot of shampoos contain SLS chemical, which is Sodium Lauryl Sulphate, which has been tested and can sometimes affect people with very sensitives scalps. Unfortunately Lush products do contain SLS (although just to mention that most people shouldn't be affected by these, unless you plan on leaving the shampoo on your head for hours but my scalp is a tad more sensitive). Apparently the SLS does not help the PH of your hair/skin, so can create dryness.  So i've been investigating into SLS free alternatives and found that there are some people selling SLS free shampoo bars, which can be used for sensitive skin. However most places suggesting using these call it the "No poo" formula for hair, meaning the ingredients are much more natural and apparently better for your hair. So they also recommend that when using these, you at first wash your hair only 2-3 times a week, and then rinse with a vinegar rinse (which helps soften the hair and balance out the natural PH). They say using the shop bought shampoos that have chemicals in it, will strip your hair of their natural oils, and then recoat them with silicates within the shampoo to make them soft. This means your hair then gets greasier quicker as your head attempts to regenerate your natural oils and restore the balance. So you notice your hair is greasy, then wash it again and the cycle continues. They have recommended when switching over to this method to only wash a few times a week to allow your hair/scalp time to get used to not being stripped down by chemicals. The vinegar rinse recommends you use 2-4 tablespoons of unrefined apple cider vinegar in 250ml of warm water, which you then throw over your hair after shampooing and leave for a few minutes to work it's magic. I have tried this, and I mixed in a few drops of grapefruit essential oils and a few drops of vitamin e oil to help nourish my hair and to help it not smell of vinegar. I have only used this method once so far, and my hair is still getting used to routine. My hair did not smell like vinegar at all once I dried it, which was incredible, as i thought i'd be walking around stinking of the stuff, but all was fine. I'll let you guys know in a few weeks when i update on how it's going (i'm determined to try it out). You can get the suppliers to send you products in no plastic, which is great and the cider vinegar will come in glass bottles, so there's no issues there.

It's interesting because I never realised where not using plastic might take me, and it's got me to try a load of different things which I never knew existed.

Anyhow, until next time.

Thanks for reading.

Day 21 - Recycling Symbols and Petrol Stations

Day 21 

Recycling, what can/ can't be collected in local recycling will depend on where you are in the UK, as it changes from county to county and for those of you further afield may vary quite considerably to this too. My local council will accept a lot of different types of plastics that some councils will not accept, such as plastic shopping bags, which some councils refuse meaning you have to find somewhere else to recycle it.

My council will accept the following plastic recycling:
Plastic packaging (in the photo it has things like yoghurt pots, microwave trays, butter tubs etc).
Carrier bags (pictured shopping bags)
Plastic bottles (minus the lids)

There are however different types of all of these plastics, as some have the 3 arrows recycling symbols but with a number in the middle of it which will tell you the recyclability of that piece of plastic. I've been searching the internet trying to find out if my local recycling will note down which numbers of plastic they will accept in their recycling, however I cannot find it at the moment. It would be useful if they displayed these on their kerbside bins so we know what they definitely will accept and what they don't, so at the moment it does leave the average person somewhat perplexed as to what can be collected or not.

I found this table online that gives you a rough idea of what each of the symbols mean and whether they can be recycled or not. So it looks as though generally my kerbside collection will probably only accept 1,2 and 4 type plastics, and the others become much trickier. If you are concerned about these, it might be wise to contact your local council to try and get an answer for which of these are accepted or not.

Interestingly as well, there are some plastics that have a "recycling logo" but confusingly this may not mean they can be recycled. It actually means that the producer has a financial contribution to the recovery and recycling of the product. Basically meaning it cannot be recycled. I found this on a malteser packet so thought i'd check it and realised I'd been throwing it into the recycling when it shouldn't be going there. So beware of this symbol!

There are some things that can be recycled by the local supermarkets, who accept the carrier bags for recycling, these include: Bread bags, breakfast cereal packets, toilet/kitchen roll wraps, shrink wrap, magazine wraps etc. These can be recycled, however a lot of the time they are reused to make bin bags for the general waste bins, so they'll end up in the landfill anyway, no matter what you do.
Depressing huh?

So this is why it would be better to reduce the plastic used in the first places, rather than trying to deal with the consequences. Saying that, some companies such as Lush do recycle their own pots, which I will go into the next blog.



Petrol  Stations - these are a massive problem in my opinion, the same as any quick, convenient shops as they have almost everything packaged in plastic. Everything. As they are a place for people to stop, grab and go, 98% of the products they have are completely packaged in plastic. Exceptions to these are cans of drinks and maybe apples/bananas if provided. All pastries, sandwiches, and snacks all come wrapped, making it impossible for someone avoiding it to actually buy anything. I've had to go there to get milk for my nan (as she cannot have my amazing raw milk), getting her bread short notice (when she calls me at like 7pm on my way home from work, when there is no chance in hell of a bakery being open) and it's just annoying really.

Who decided plastic was a mark of cleanliness I don't know, but it seems a lot of companies over package their goods, which most of the time is unnecessary and unwanted by the consumer.

Anyhow, until next time!

Thanks for reading.