Plastic, plastic everywhere

Oh dear, oh dear

I've been putting off writing this because, to be honest, I've failed on my Zero Plastic Waste challenge. And it's only halfway through April. That just goes to show how difficult it is.

My house mate and I got a Thali takeaway - If you live in Bristol, you'll know a Thali is difficult to resist. But I didn't think we'd end up with any plastic because she asked for it in our Thali Tiffin - a wonderful invention, especially when you're trying to avoid plastic. 

But, when she came back, they had given her some samosas in a separate cardboard box, with a little pot of dipping sauce - a little PLASTIC pot of dipping sauce. Of course.

 

Now, I didn't buy it, and technically I didn't throw it away either, but I did eat half its contents, and it did end up in the bin. Does that count as a fail?

Another stumble last week occurred when I went to stay with friends in Yorkshire. For the train journey, I had packed a banana and some nuts to snack on; it was a long journey, but I had had lunch prior to leaving and knew dinner would be waiting for me when I arrived. All good, I thought, no plastic packaging required.

But I hadn't planned for the return journey, when I would be travelling over lunch time. I made myself a sandwich, but had no lunch box to put it in. My friend gave me a plastic sandwich bag, which I put straight in the bin when I got home out of habit - it probably could have been washed and re-used, but I just didn't think. 

Right now you may be thinking, "What's the big deal? It's only a flimsy little bit of plastic". But it's these flimsy bits of plastic which are rarely recyclable, can more easily escape from the waste disposal chain, and end up in our trees, rivers and eventually oceans.

"We currently recover only 5% of the plastics we produce. What happens to the rest of it? Roughly 50% is buried in landfills, some is remade into durable goods, and much of it remains “unaccounted for”, lost in the environment where it ultimately washes out to sea." 

To me, it's that thin, ubiquitous plastic that is the biggest problem. 

I'm not going to let these hiccups stop me on my journey to eliminate plastic waste, however. This is not just a month-long challenge for me, it is an attempt to change the way I live permanently.

Lesson learned - On long journeys, ALWAYS take a lunch box, bottle of water and reusable cup with you. Even if you're not taking any lunch, or coffee with you. At train stations, airports and bus stations, it's nigh on impossible to get any plasticfree food or drinks. Even at cafes where you can eat in, they usually give you a takeaway cup, or plastic box.

"What's wrong with take-away coffee cups?", I hear you ask. 

Well, let me tell you 5 things you didn't know about disposable coffee cups:

1. EVERY MINUTE over ONE MILLION disposable cups are discarded to landfill.

I'm just going to let you think about that for a minute...

That's 60 million every hour. Or 1,440 million per day. In other words, MORE THAN 565 BILLION CUPS IN LANDFILL every year. That's a lot of cups.

2. Most disposable cups are lined with polythylene which makes them NON-RECYCLABLE.

3. Disposable cups that are 'compostable' require commercial composting to biodegrade. If they get put in a normal bin, they will not fully break down  And how many people remember to put them in the compost bin?

4. Even if they were recyclable (like this one claims to be) the process still relies on the consumer to find a paper recycling bin on the train/at the airport/on the street....

5. ...And they would be "recycled" (more like down-cycled) into flimsy paper, like newspaper, thus requiring more trees to be cut down to make another 1,440 million more 'recyclable' cups EVERY DAY!

So I'm not a fan of the disposable coffee cup.

Neither am I a fan of these: Loom bands. At least they last a bit longer than disposable coffee cups. 



I was given this one last summer by a friend of my nephew. I intend to keep it FOREVER! Just thinking about all the bands that must have ended up in landfill since they took off last year make me shiver. 

I signed up to an organic veg box scheme this week, thinking that would take the pressure off me to find veg shops that don't wrap everything in you-know-what. Imagine my horror when the first box arrived with two plastic bags in it!

Do I really need my broccoli and cabbage to be wrapped? They're going to be either washed or cooked anyway. I'm going to give them back, along with the reusable box it all came in. Hopefully they'll reuse the bags too...

Anyway, I digress. I've failed, and therefore I must take the consequences. So I hereby announce that I will be walking through Bristol City Centre wearing nothing but plastic bags on Saturday 2nd May. Hopefully, it'll get a bit of media attention, and raise awareness of what I'm trying to do.

This is what I'm trying to do, by the way. CLICK HERE to pledge to reduce your carbon footprint too!