Plastic Free July

The first day of July begins a month dedicated to the cause of trying to reduce the use of plastic.

The website Plastic Free July gives you lots of ideas of how to eliminate the use of plastic all together, or for those not able to fully commit they can work on the top 4 uses of plastic - straws, plastic bottles, plastic coffee lids, and the every present plastic bags.  I have decided to work on the top four, and any others as I can.

I have reusable shopping bags, a reusable coffee cup and reusable produce bags.  Now just to remember them when I need them.

I see this as a good challenge.  I already shop at the local bin shop with reusable containers too but it is hard to escape plastic when grocery shopping with many fruits and vegetables wrapped in plastic.  Then there are the milk products - milk, yogurt, cheese.  Come spring when the goats kid I look forward to recycling my glass bottles for milk bottles, and making our own yogurt.  Cheddar cheese is a little different as I don't think I will have enough milk to tackle that.

With a young family there are a lot of plastic encounters.  With bubs there are disposable nappy packets, and the wipes.  To counter this we use cloth nappies, and cloth wipes most of the time. 

 

With our daughter there are the school lunches.  I do not use food wrap, instead using Tupperware containers.  Yes these are plastic and I am investigating stainless steel options to replace the Tupperware containers I have had for about 3 years.  Then there is the contents of the lunch boxes.  I try to make bread rolls, muffins, biscuits etc and buy as little pre-packaged items as I can.

 

Pet plastic annoyances are the plastic bread tags and the plastic handles on bags of flour, chook food, potatoes and so on.  I do make some of our bread, but the flour for the bread still has those plastic handles.

 

Then there are plastic toothbrushes and dishbrushes.  When these have passed their use by dates I will be replacing with alternative options.  Ecostore have wooden dishbrushes, and there are bamboo toothbrushes available.

 

What plastic that we do have I try to recycle rather than have it end in the landfill.

 

What ways do you try to eliminate plastic?