Plastic Free July and Pie July 2018 round-up

Plastic Free July 2018

Plastic Free July is finished for another year and was bigger than ever – 3.4 million participants in 177 countries joined in. If you were one of them, I hope it has been a positive experience and that you have nurtured some new habits that you can continue!

To quote Richard Dennis from his excellent 2017 book Curing Affluenza: How to buy less stuff and save the world, p208

“Those who want major change do not have to take responsibility for designing utopia; they only need to pursue the changes that they believe will make things better, steer away from those they think will make things worse, and work with others who share their goals even if they don’t share their priorities. The future is full of alternatives we haven’t yet rolled out – the only thing up for grabs is who will choose them.”

Here is the picture of the single-use plastic we used during our first Plastic Free July, in 2017

Single-use plastic used throughout our first Plastic Free July in 2017

And here is a picture of the plastic used during this year’s Plastic Free July, in 2018.

Single-use plastic used during Plastic Free July 2018

The count

Plastic milk bottles & lids: 17

Plastic bags

• Hops & yeast packets (for beer brewing): 4
• Plastic mailing pouches from magazines and online orders: 5
• Chook food bag: 1
• Ziplock bag split so badly it can’t be reused: 1
• Unidentified plastic packaging bag (possibly from our new iron, which came in a cardboard box, so why did it need to be in plastic as well?): 1

Toiletries

• tiny shampoo container: 1 (The Man has a stash of these from work trip hotels that he’s working his way through)
• toothpaste tube: 1
• small tissue packets/plastic from tissue boxes: 3

Plastic brought home from kids’ parties

• lolly wrappers: approx 6
• glow stick bracelets: 2

Other

Lid from a can of aerosol furniture polish: 1

Changes since 2017

Plastic milk bottles

As you can see, plastic milk bottles are by far the biggest single-use plastic waste offender in our home. Until I can:

• buy shares in a cow or goat (or get one of my own), or
• someone in my area starts up a fresh-milk-delivery-in-reusable-glass-bottles service like the one I grew up with (WHY did milkos stop being a thing? I’m looking at you, supermarkets), or
• I can find someone who will take delivery of bulk good milk and let me fill my own bottles

it will continue to be so.

My family all thrive on dairy and we are blessed to be able to buy Margaret River Organic Dairy’s beautiful and delicious milk.

[I have contacted Margaret River Dairy previously to ask about them switching to glass bottles, but they don’t have enough water to sterilise glass bottles as well as run the dairy.]

As suspected, this year we used even more milk bottles than last year. We had visitors for part of the month, but the main reason is that I am now making all our own yogurt.

So while we had no small yogurt packets this year, and saved on the embedded energy and carbon footprint of dehydrating the milk, packaging and shipping from New Zealand, we have more milk bottles to show for it.

Pasta and cheese plastic

Last year’s plastic had several cheese and pasta packets. Now I’m nearly always making my own pasta those plastic packets are greatly reduced.

I have been extremely fortunate to be let in on a local invitation-only fortnightly purchase from a local dairy’s cheese van where I buy wheels of Romano and large teardrops of Provole. Instead of plastic, they are cased in their edible rinds which I either eat at the time or freeze to go in minestrone.

Meat – trays and vacuum bags

No meat packaging this year! In the last twelve months we have really focussed on trying to get plastic-free meat. Taking our own containers to the butcher has really helped with this. Unfortunately that means missing out on a lot of the good meat available at the Farmers’ Market, which is all packaged in plastic.

Toiletries…

Toiletries were less this year. I’m working on simplifying my personal skin care and for family items like toothpaste I’m buying the biggest tube possible to reduce the amount of plastic we use.

and punnets

No punnets at all this year! We’re really in the swing of taking our own containers now and avoid fruit and veg packaged in punnets unless we can return for reuse.

Plastic Free July 2018 changes

Bin Liners

When we first stopped using plastic bin bags we lined our bins with newspaper. Now we have simply stopped lining three of the four bins in our home.

And you know what else? I’m not even washing the bins after emptying them. I do a quick sniff test and if it’s not stinky then I just put it back. It is a bin, after all. Why does the vessel that the vacuum cleaner will be emptied into need to be pristine to start with?

Only the occasional cooked bone goes into our bin, apart from that all food scraps are given to The Flock or composted.

I still have a roll of plastic bin liners for the bathroom bin. I keep reusing the same one. One of those liners has already lasted a couple of months, so I’ll keep reusing those until I have no more.

With our reduction in packaging waste, our bins have had so little in them that twice this month I didn’t even put our wheelie bins out for collection!

Plastic Free Period

I celebrated my first ever plastic-free period this month.

Conclusion

Plastic Free July has been good for us to see how all the small changes and daily choices we are making really are helping to reduce our plastic, bit by bit.

Pie July 2018

We kicked off Pie July with a pumpkin pie.

Pumpkin Pie made to celebrate the start of Pie July

Next came a rhubarb pie with currants…

Rhubarb currant pie

 

then The Man made a delicious lemon meringue pie.

Lemon meringue pie

We took this craggy apple and pecan pie to a dinner party

Apple pie with sour cream pastry and pecans

and left two small pies with the same filling for The Kid and her babysitter.

Individual apple pies for those not going to the dinner party

How was your July? Did you participate in Plastic Free July or Pie July? Any ‘aha’ moments or tips you’d like to share? I’d love to hear about your experience – please let me know in the comments.