Given what we have deemed to be the success of our plastic-free July, we thought it would be interesting to see whether it was more or less expensive than an average month. A comment we have received a few times is ‘Won’t it be more expensive?’. I can understand the reasoning as it is something we have taken into consideration – and extra cost is something we are willing to embrace if necessary – as many things seem to be more expensive plastic free – fruit and vegetables in the supermarket, milk in glass bottles, and meat from a butchers, for example.

Luckily, we have already been tracking our expenses each month, which makes it reasonably easy to make a comparison. Over the last year, our average food and grocery shopping bill (this includes non-food items that we buy at the supermarket) has been £346 per month. For the 31 days for which we did Plastic-free July we spent…drum roll…£336, so £10 LESS than our average. This was surprising, even to us, as it felt like we did a LOT of shopping. Our monthly spending does fluctuate a fair bit, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out over the long term, but it is very promising that we didn’t spend a fortune more, especially given it was the first month we had paid the premium for glass bottle milk and bought all our meat plastic free.

I think there is potential for even more savings for anyone who hasn’t dipped their toe into zero waste yet. We had already implemented a number of changes gradually over the past year which have helped reduce costs as well as reduce waste – such as buying fruit and veg from our local market rather than from the supermarket – so if we hadn’t already been doing these things, the decrease would have been even more.  For interest, I have gone back through our spending log, and our average monthly spend has actually decreased by £40 per month since we started reducing our waste – a saving of nearly £500 per year! Not all of these saving may have been directly linked to reducing waste, as we were making other changes in parallel, such as simplifying our meals, but even so, it is reassuring that, despite choosing some more expensive options, such as packaging-free dried goods (such as pasta, rice, oats and lentils) we have still been able to reduce our average grocery spend.

I will say though that there was a definite cost in terms of time and convenience. Some of this was one-off investments in time, such as investigating various suitable butchers, and how best to order, which we shouldn’t have to do again now we have that organised. But still, there is no getting away from the fact that going plastic-free or zero waste is not the convenient option, as it is not possible at the moment to buy everything all in one place, and we have had to switch from shopping at one supermarket, to shopping at probably 4 or 5 different places reasonably regularly, plus a few other less frequent shops (less than once every couple of months) at other places. Monthly meal planning, and a linked main monthly shop, has helped to reduce the overall number of shopping trips, but again it takes time to plan, and is not easy convenience.

I think that is why the Waitrose Unpacked trial, which has been recently expanded to 4 other stores (none nearer to us unfortunately, despite my pleading feedback to come to Daventry!) is so exciting. It is real chance to make zero waste convenient enough that it appeals to a much wider audience. Rather than the supermarkets peddling their addictive convenience and blow the environmental consequences, shoppers could be lured into choices that in the end will benefit everyone.

Have you noticed a change in spending after starting to go plastic-free or zero waste? Have you got any tips for reducing time spent and/or increasing convenience?

 

I did some food shopping for our holiday today (9 nights camping).  The shop was plastic-free apart from a bottle of sun cream. I don’t feel ready to branch out into plastic-free varieties yet. I suspect (although I have not investigated this at all) that they may also be more natural type products, and I have tried something like that on Little MIH (but with packaging) when she was a baby – it was thick and left a white sheen, contained beeswax, so made her hair instantly greasy, and seemed to give her spots – the effect was a little like a 6 month acne-riven teenager. Also, perhaps more importantly, I had not been at all prepared, needing the sun cream the same day, and unfortunately preparation is key a lot of the time for zero-waste packaging.

The worst fail was getting home and realising we already had spare sunscreen in the cupboard, so I needn’t have bought it. And, I blame hungriness and lack of thinking capacity, I bought one with a pump, when one without would have at least been much more recyclable! Triple doh!

Fail

Suncream bottle.

Day 28 – no purchases, but I did have a bread success!

It still wasn’t quite back to previous normalness, but it didn’t look like someone had sat on it. Unfortunately I haven’t quite identified the problem as I, unscientifically, changed maybe three variables at once – I made sure to err on the lower side for the water quantity (I’ve just realised I may do better weighing the water, as 280ml is quite difficult to measure in a jug, although I suspect the type of flour will vary the water quantity of water needed); I didn’t add any seeds this time, in case they interfere with the kneading process; and I opened a new sachet of yeast.

Day 29 – I forgot to make an extra loaf of bread today, so Mr MIH may be having slightly smaller sandwiches than normal tomorrow, as he uses up the abnormally small loaves. Still, the each slice of bread should be as filling as normal, but just be more space efficient.

Finally cracked the elusive packaging-free sausages, in time for family visiting. I went over to the nearest town with a butchers, where they make their own sausages on site (so no transporting them in the same trays I would otherwise buy them in the supermarket), and it was only ‘Sausage Wednesday’ – £2 per kg off all sausages! They still came in at just under 20% more expensive than the Tesco Finest sausages we would usually buy (one of the rare products we actually opt to buy from a supermarket ‘premium’ range), but compared to the extra cost of some things we have opted for, this did not seem to horrific. And the best bit? They actually thanked me for using my own container (I did ask, but hadn’t noticed the sign on the counter encouraging customers to use their own containers) and apologised profusely for being legally obliged to give me labels for each type of sausage (I bought four), and stuck them on a separate piece of paper for me, instead of my box lid, which has several remnants of old stickers on it! I’ll definitely go back there – it was so nice for someone to be enthusiastic and helpful about what we are trying to do.

 

A plastic-free day today! But it does feel a little like we are limping to the end of plastic-free July. I suppose part of the issue is trying to change so many things at once, which is precisely the approach we have avoided up until now (we have been gradually decreasing waste for the last year). First there were the yoghurt issues, until finally the yoghurt ran out so we couldn’t make any more, and today we have had serious bread issues. Two rather flat loaves. I swapped flour after the first one, in case that was the issue, but still the same issue with previously tried and tested flour. They have risen a bit, but not the full whack, and they crust on top looks a little ‘stringy’. Please feel free to comment below with any ideas of what may be wrong. I’m wondering if the amount of water was too high. The other sadder possibility is that I broke our bread maker yesterday when I forgot to put the stirrer in.

Little MIH and I started preparing today for our camping trip today, by making some flapjacks to take with us, so we have some useful snacks to hand. It turned out we didn’t have enough porridge oats (luckily before we started melting anything), so we had to have an emergency trip to get some. Luckily, we now buy these from Aldi, rather than our local zero waste store, who we order from and then go and pick up from several days later.

Little MIH did complain and say that she just wanted to get the ones in plastic, as it is a longer trip for us to Aldi (I’m hoping we minimise our vehicle impact by having an electric car, charged with solar). They turned out a little crumbly, but tasty. It is a long time since I have made flapjacks. Mr MIH got rather into it at one point before Little MIH was born. There were lots of elaborate additions, including venturing into chocolate drops at one point. We stopped making them though when we realised our waistlines had crept up and this was probably attributable to the flapjacks! And tasting these today, I can see where the issue lay – they are extremely tasty, in an oozing butter and sugar kind of way. Definitely a holiday-only treat!

Mr MIH had some issues at Sainsbury’s today when getting his lunch supplies for the week, after thinking he had cracked it last week. This week the issue was that they did not want to put 2 different items in the same container. He pointed out that they had done it last week (as could be seen by the two stickers still on the lid!), which is why he only bought one container this week, but no go. I think this has been one of the most frustrating things about trying to go no-plastic in supermarkets – the inconsistency, between different branches of the same chain, and also between different people at the same shop.

Little MIH has been pretty on board with trying the toothpaste tablets recently, despite finding them ‘too spicy’. In fact, the spiciness has had the added benefit that it encourages her to spit out the paste made from the tablet, rather than swallow toothpaste like she normally does. So even if the tablets do have more fluorine than kiddy toothpaste, she is probably actually consuming less. We just have to get in there really quickly for the brushing before she spits! Mr MIH also noted that her bamboo toothpaste has lasted a lot longer than her plastic ones used to. I think the plastic ones had a nice soft plastic moulded head, which was just nice and squidgy to chew down on, and so the bristles would get wrecked very quickly from the chewing. Although she has never complained about the bamboo brush, and has embraced it, I suspect hard bamboo is just not that tasty and comforting to chew on. So although the price of the bamboo toothbrush was three times that of the toothbrushes we used to buy for her (we bought this one), long term I don’t think the cost will be three times as much (until she gets to the point she would have stopped chewing her toothbrush anyway of course which, who knows, may have already happened, and was nothing to do with the bamboo toothbrush!).

Any bread maker troubleshooters out there with some top tips on how to fix my bread?!

 

Yesterday was a plastic-free day I think. Little MIH had the option of water in a bottle at her pre-school graduation but said she didn’t want it, as squash was on offer from a jug into a re-usable plastic beaker.

Mr MIH had a weekend away with his brothers. They went wild camping for one night, and while the other 2 shopped in the supermarket beforehand, Mr MIH opted to wait outside and look after his brother’s dog to technically keep to the rules and ‘not buy’ and items with plastic packaging!

Today was also plastic free (no shopping again!). An epic fail though was forgetting to put the mixer arm in the bread maker until 10 mins before the bread maker program ended. There was a very hot layer of flour, covered with a slightly fried and crispy top layer, where the butter and water were. And it was meant to be a loaf with some of my nice organic flour I got on my birthday. Sad times.

Fails

None (plastic-wise)

Unsolicited items

None.

I went shopping again today for a bit more of the weekly shop, and we still haven’t got everything. Some veg from the market. I forgot the white cabbage, which was unwrapped in Waitrose, but did have a massive sticker on it which I suspect is non-recyclable (will have to investigate further). Topped up on cheese in Waitrose. They have obviously been drilled on being helpful to people wanting to use their own containers, or maybe just being helpful in general). The woman was extremely friendly, making sure she cut the block just right to fit in my pot in one piece. Unfortunately though, she needed to put a plastic film sheet on the scales to weight the cheese (I presume there is no tare feature on the scales?), and the cheese came from a block wrapped in plastic. I bought it, but as before, it is fairly pointless when we could just buy a whole block, in a similar fashion (except perhaps with less friendliness) for half the price in Tesco. They were also very friendly when I asked about the packaging the sausages on the deli came in (to reach the deli). It was much the same as in Tesco – similar to that found on the shelves (albeit a slight improvement of a clear tray over a non-recyclable black tray). So no sausages today. I am going to try a butchers in a nearby town next week, that apparently makes their own sausages on site, so hopefully no packaging!

Went for it and bought the toothpaste for Little MIH.

The exciting find of the day was block Vanilla ice cream in Tesco (not our most local one, but next to the veg market, so easily doable on a general Friday shopping trip).

I have been directed to this peanut butter recipe by Granny MIH (thank you!) to try and solve my peanut butter woes. I’m not convinced by the capability of my food processor, but my give it a try at some point. It looks tasty.

 

Time for the third weekly rubbish review. It’s certainly seemed more challenging this week, probably as we use up things in the house, and can only put off not buying more difficult things, such as cheese and meat, for so long.

What has come in

Fails

Apple stickers; small amount of sellotape from socks and tights packaging; little clothes tags. A minisicule amount this week. I’ve probably cheated a little in that e must have bought some butter, so there should be a butter wrapper in there. Still, the stuff I have included comes to 1g.

Unsolicited items

Just a sweet packet and chocolate wrapper and box inner extra (and probably a window envelope or two) I think.

What has gone out

And, for your delight and delectation, I give you our week 3 rubbish….

Plastic – recyclable

A slight increase over last week – 55g. Still, the biscuits we were given were very tasty…Note the chopped up ibuprofen packaging (I still need to check that the plastic can actually be added to our recycling!).

Non-recyclable waste

A big jump up from last week – 90g (vs 52g last week). I think it probably mostly comes from the bag for a box of wine. We are no longer buying these! Most of the other items are old things we have been using up, and either will not buy these again, or have plastic-free replacements. Of note is the festival wristband – we also got 2 more of these type bands from going swimming at the weekend, though they obviously have not made it in to the rubbish yet!  I’ll try asking if we can not have the wristbands next time and see what they say – I suspect the answer will be no, as they use them to count people in.

 

 

I part did the weekly shop early today. Sorry, no exciting shopping pics – I know you will be hugely disappointed. Some of the more difficult purchases to get tomorrow. This includes sausages, which I nearly bought from the deli in Tesco, but because I needed more than the quantity on the counter, the lady got some more out – and they were just wrapped exactly as they would be on the shelf – black tray with plastic wrap, so I gave up on that idea. It’s a bit more tricky than previously, as our local butcher has just closed in the last couple of weeks.

I had planned to go to the deli in Waitrose, but looking on their website, I may have the same problem – it lists packaging, including a tray and wrap. It may just be when you order online, so I will check. The next option is the local market, but otherwise I may have to go with plan B meal-wise.

Tomorrow I am going to have our biggest intentional fail and buy Little MIH some more toothpaste. She was quite happy to try the toothpaste tablets, and didn’t object to the chewing or powderyness, but she did find them ‘too spicy’ (and they also have an adult level of fluoride, so not ideal).

Fails

Apple stickers – we have given up on these they seem inevitable.

Avocado sticker – I could have waited until going to the market tomorrow. Naughty.

Unsolicited items

Pre-school graduation day for Little MIH, and we came home with a plastic-laminated certificate and a plastic covered star medal, with plastic letter beads.

Happy Birthday to me! A mostly plastic-free birthday present-wise, with the only plastic because the present came from before we started the challenge (and in any case it doesn’t break the rules…oh, and I LOVE mint chocolate, so it should be allowed just for that). (The second-hand puzzle was requested by me btw, and is not because Mr MIH is tight!)

Had a lovely pizza lunch with Mr MIH, and popped into a local ethical wholefood shop (first visit), a local farm shop, and Sainsbury’s. Here is my haul.

Some general staples in there – red lentils, wrapping paper, coffee, and some organic wholemeal flour I treated myself to test out whether we can taste the difference. Plus, cinnamon and raisin bagels (loose in Sainsbury’s – I just popped them in my own cloth bag, then went to a self service till – the lady supervising did come over at one point, but didn’t say anything, so an easy win there!), a cucumber from the wholefoods shop, and crisps from the farm shop. The cucumber were definite treats at £1.50 for the cucumber and 99p a bag of crisps! Plus, not shown, a batch of muesli for Mr MIH to try, from the wholefoods shop. I did work out an estimate of the cost of mixing our own muesli from unpackaged sources, but it was only 15% cheaper than buying from our usual no packaging supplier. However, this one came in even cheaper – I think it is not so organic or deluxe, so we will give it a go.

 

Here are the crisps with my homemade hummous from yesterday:

Plus, in other news, whilst we were enjoying the crisps and cucumber sticks with yesterday’s homemade hummous after school, I discussed with Little MIH that maybe the trying things 10 times idea to decide if you really don’t like them was actually meant to mean you tried them on 10 different days. But it didn’t matter, she declared she now loved the hummous. Win! I will make a bigger batch next time, and freeze portions because apparently you can.

And here is the chopped crisp packet in our compost caddy (also with the remains of a water bomb, a packet of which I found languishing in the back of the cupboard – natural rubber = compostable). We’ll see next spring if they really do compost down in just over 26 weeks!

Unsuccessful searches were: cardboard wrapped ice cream – Sainsbury’s didn’t seem to have any in stock (although they do have it online) (despite selling flat wafers for it!); peanut butter – I found 2 jars today without plastic tamper wraps and without plastic lids, but one seemed to have plasticised label, and the other I baulked at the price (it was a Suma brand one). However, the price wasn’t as bad as I thought – don’t get me wrong, it was just over twice the price, so was still very expensive, but not quite as bad as I had calculated. Plus, there was also a larger jar option, which worked out a little cheaper.

I also noticed that it seems to be the non-plastic-lid jars that have the plastic tamper wrap in various shops. I can’t decide which is the lesser evil going forward (or cough up for the Suma one)! Interestingly, Sunpat (which has a plastic lid) has a paper tamper feature, rather than plastic. I can feel a letter coming on to the other peanut butter manufacturers – I think removing the plastic would probably align with the values of the customers who buy the premium (no added sugar or salt) peanut butters, and there seems to be a viable alternative (unless the wrap also provides a seal, as I have a feeling that the plastic-lidded jars also have a seal across the top of the jar, under the lid. But if the wrap is purely to provide a tamper indication, the paper alternative should do the trick.

And, lastly, a spot for another time was clotted cream in a jar from a farm shop.

 

Fails

None

Unsolicited items

1 envelope window

Chocolate box wrap and inner. Sellotape.

Has anyone else made any changes recently, or had success in finding any items which had previously proved difficult?

 

 

A plastic-free day! A quick top-up trip to Tesco to grab some fruit for Little MIH’s lunch box. This was the depressing view of various fruit and salad items, gah.

I stocked up on some canned pulses, fish fingers, and treated us to fish cakes in cardboard packaging. Plus toblerones for presents.

I have been planning a little road trip locally tomorrow to visit a couple of packaging-free shops and a farm shop to scope out what they have. The farm shop stocks Two Farmers crisps, which come in compostable packaging. I don’t often eat crisps, but once I realised I couldn’t I have been wanting some. Plus, another win. I made hummous today, another thing we have had to give up bought. I used this recipe, so no tahini needed, and it took 5 mins and was yummy (even though not the same as shop-bought hummous…although probably tastier imho). I think I might use less garlic next time. Little MIH declared she only liked shop hummous. I enticed her to try some, and she said she did not like it. I reminded her that to really decide you don’t like a food you need to try it 10 times, so she decided to do that there and then, dipping carrot sticks, to prove she definitely didn’t like it. She said she still didn’t like it, but I am considering her eating 10 mouthfuls a win! So crisps and hummous coming up tomorrow, yum!

Also, some exciting cleaning products progress. I checked back on Ocean Saver‘s website today and they now let you order individual pods, whereas previously you could only buy a mixed pack, including floor cleaner and kitchen cleaner which we didn’t need (plus I would have thought we wouldn’t get through everything evenly). The price per pod goes down for each extra pod up to 6, and they have confirmed by email that you can mix and match pods within your order. The only thing I am not sure about is how eco-friendly the cleaning products themselves are – as there is nothing about this on their website, I’m assuming not particularly.

Fails

None!

Unsolicited items

None!