The yoghurt is no more. It seemed to work consistency-wise this time (so I wonder if it was the organic milk which stopped it working completely), but it tasted a bit cheesy and off, so had to be thrown away. There is now no starter yoghurt left, so we can’t make any more until we buy more in a plastic pot after the end of the month. Although having said that…I have just found that there is live yoghurt available, in a jar, from Milk & More, but it is a bit more pricey. I may have to think on that one some more.
Saturday – bought a top up of barbeque meat for Sunday. It was not the old-school butcher type guy who seems quite happy to wap meat straight into our container, so we ended up with it wrapped in paper.
Sunday – nothing bought; Little MIH gained a packet of sweets in a plastic bag at a village event, but turned down a bottle of water (not for plastic reasons, I don’t think, though!).
Monday – Mr MIH was recognised by the lady on the deli in Sainsbury’s today when he went to get his weekly lunch shop. He was able to get his items put straight into his container, so packaging free. He did get some apples with stickers though. He is also trialling tinned rice pudding as a breakfast, as he has run out of muesli, and we have only just put in an order to our local packaging free shop, and they are taking a while to respond at the moment.
Also, exciting spots to investigate – butter in a paper type wrapper and cinnamon and raisin bagels!
Butter
Bagels
And I found someone else locally who is also doing Plastic-Free July – exciting!
A weekly shop day today. It was noticeable that it took Mr MIH considerably longer than usual, as he had to visit 4 different places (Aldi, Tesco, Waitrose, and the local veg market). And we had to say goodbye to peanut butter, as he was not able to find it without an anti-tamper strip around the lid of the jar.
But hello to Waitrose cheese from their deli. Although the cheese does meet the criteria of the challenge, we still need to come up with a longer term plan, as the cheese does come in a plastic wrapper to Waitrose, it is just that we only bought a small part of the large block. Usually we would buy cheese at half the price from Tesco, and to minimise packaging would just buy the whole block, wrapped in plastic (as Tesco won’t open a new block for us (and the deli is really just an array of pre-wrapped pieces from the larger blocks). I think the 3 options we have are: 1) continue buying cheese from Tesco as one large block; 2) try and source somewhere locally that does not receive cheese plastic-wrapped; 3) buy cheese in wax – there are varying reports whether this is compostable, so we could give that a try, and/or the wax could be reused – for example for candles, wax wraps, or as fire starters.
We stocked up on 4 bread batons, and made these into garlic bread which has gone in the freezer. These were cost neutral, as the batons were fairly pricey as we had to get them from Waitrose. We may try a cheaper long baguette from the market another time, with the extra bonus of fewer unpopular end pieces of bread!
There was still some plastic that came in. One type was apple stickers (again!). The other was a conscious decision to make the most of Aldi’s school uniform offers and buy some socks and tights. The socks, at least, would come under the category of underwear, which is not something we are considering buying second hand at the moment, and the plastic in the packaging seemed the minimum we would ever likely manage – 4 small pieces of sellotape for the tights, and one small piece of sellotape and two little plastic ‘tags’ to hold the socks together on each of the socks packets.
No purchases on Days 14 and 15, so nothing to report.
Chicken fail on top; peas success below
A large chicken fail today. After reassuring me that I could pick up my chicken order in my own container, the butcher at the arm shop handed me a large plastic bag, with 5 portions of chicken breasts all wrapped individually in further plastic bags. Sigh. Apparently if I let them know, I could collect it in my own container – but I did let them know (which I told him). He had only put it in the bags ’10 mins before’. So that’s ok then. Changes to process – send email with request for use of my own containers in bold in the subject, and in the email; pick chicken up in the morning, rather than the afternoon. Quite annoying considering the extra cost and the 2 trips and 2 emails I had to make to make and collect.
The saving grace was that I could top up our frozen peas packaging free, and the woman behind the till went to considerable lengths to work out how to let me do it, and was very friendly about it. I checked for butter in paper, but they didn’t have any.
Two weeks in, and time for another weekly rubbish review. It’s been another week with a good few unsmiley faces on the chart, but the ‘plastic in’ box still felt small and our recycling bin seemed only half full compared with normal levels.
What has come in
All plastic brought in, minus the biscuit box
Fails
Fruit/veg stickers; gin bottle stickers; tape; butter wrapper – I’ve included a butter wrapper in the plastic we introduced this week. I have concluded that not only are butter wrappers not recyclable, as they contain mixed materials (paper and metal) they also seem to include a plastic film layer. After scouring the internet for tips for plastic-less butter wrappers, it seems that all the brands that had paper butter wrappers in the UK, now use this mixed-film type wrapper. There seem to be a few local brands that still use paper (which I think would be compostable) but I have yet to source any near here. So this butter wrapper was bought knowing that it probably contained plastic – probably our first deliberate purchase 😦
Unsolicited items
Black bin bag. This was wrapping a second-hand, largely plastic, water heater (ordered before the start of the challenge). I don’t count the water heater here as it is a second-hand item (plus it should help us cut down on water and energy wastage), but eh black bag is an unfortunate side effect of eBay purchases.
Biscuit packaging from very tasty biscuits which were a happily received present.
What has gone out
And, for your delight and delectation, I give you our week 2 rubbish….
Plastic – recyclable
A continued high five for us. We came in at 40g this week, so marginally up from the 36g last week (NB these figures will need to be adjusted at the end of the month to take into account the plastic brought in, which I have currently saved). The main item I think we will continue to get post this challenge is the plastic insert from the olive oil bottle (far right). The lid (far left) has already been well reused by Little MIH for a ‘sticking’.
Plastic recycling
Full disclosure – I haven’t documented our full recycling, as we also long-term store Terracycle waste. This week we dispatched a load of toothpaste tubes (courtesy of Granny MIH).
Non-recyclable waste
Destined for landfill
I thought we had more this week than last week, but it actually weighed in at 52g, 24g less than last week! One of the large wrappers (bottom right) was from an empty coffee tin Mr MIH brought home from work, for us to store unpackaged dried goods in.
Again, these figures will need to be adjusted at the end of the month to take into account the plastic brought in during the challenge, which I have currently separated.
The main items from this week that we have yet to find alternatives for (and for which I think there could be alternatives) are: cheddar cheese, butter, and dried yeast. The hunt is on!
I think I might start trying to recycle as much of the ibuprofen blister packs as possible, by scraping the foil off the plastic, then cutting out the uncontaminated plastic and putting it in the recycling, and also collecting the foil into a ball to put in the recycling. I found information of a ‘pay for’ Terracycle box to take medicine containers (including blister packs) but clicking on the various links, it doesn’t actually seem to be available.
Have you had any success in recycling painkiller tablet blister packs?
The only purchases today were Mr MIH’s lunch. He was able to buy from the Sainsbury’s deli meat sandwich filling wrapped in paper (eventually) or I think he could have used his own container. It seems they wanted to put it in a container (which he hadn’t brought as last time they just wanted to wrap it in paper). They managed to find a paper bag eventually and used that.
Music festival spoils – a skirt made of plastic netting material and a brown with various plastic shapes and sequins. Technically we didn’t pay for this, but that wasn’t really the intention of this rule, but also this was Little MIHs choice, so I’ll put it under unsolicited.
Successes were: taking own plastic cups for drinks and buying a bottle of wine; ice creams in cones for snacks.
Wargh, fruit and veg stickers, in particular three apple, two avocado, and one mango today. But plastic-free shops apart from that. Tesco for general veg (potatoes, carrots, courgette, pepper) which we can still get there out of packaging. Plus we are lucky that we still have a deli in Tesco 4 days a week, and we were able to pick up some barbeque meat there for this weekend and next. It is wrapped in paper, and although I washed it I’m not sure if it will still get pulled out of the recycling , so I’ll probably just pop it in our compost.
And our order from our local packaging-free shop was ready, so we picked that up – spaghetti, noodles, cashews, enough sultanas for a couple of months, washing up liquid, and Mr MIH’s new deodorant. Mr MIH reports that it worked well while he was working a very busy shift at our village music festival last night. It is very soft though, so we have popped it in the fridge so that it lasts more than a week!
Packaging-free shop
Talking of the music festival, Mr MIH did have a pint in a plastic cup (although by the rules I made up, as he didn’t pay for it, it hasn’t broken the rule, but that wasn’t exactly the intention of that rule). Glass isn’t allowed for safety reasons I think. but he thought that some people did have their own cups, so we will have to come up with a solution for tonight. I’m not sure where the two-hundred-odd drinks he served to other people in plastic cups leaves us though!
Mr MIH also got to grips with the bread maker today, and turned out a very nice seedy wholemeal.
The highlight of the day though was definitely the start of the rhubarb gin making. Not sure this entirely comes under the category plastic-free (although it didn’t involve purchasing anything with plastic, but neither would have straight gin!), but, well, it is rhubarb gin, so here are some pics of the process so far…gin to be added today, then left for 4 weeks (although I’m assured it can taste good after 2 weeks!).
Fails
Fruit and veg stickers.
Update: we realised that the gin bottles had plastic stickers when we came to clean them up.
So just over one week in, and time for our weekly rubbish review. Although we have had more unsmiley faces (denoting days where we bought something which included plastic – usually inadvertently!) than smiley faces (plastic-free days) I know that the ‘fails’ where we have brought some plastic into the house have been relatively small, so I was hoping for big things, and the results have not disappointed!
What has come in
Fails
First off a recap of the ‘fails’ – this is the plastic in the things we bought this week. I don’t have a handy comparison photo of before and after, as I usually split plastic into recyclable and the rest in with all the non-recyclable waste. This week though we introduced 3g of plastic into our house (actually probably less, that included the cardboard attached to the rip strip). I note is all non-recyclable.
Our fails – this is the plastic included in things we bought.
Unsolicited items
Unsolicited items and fails
So obviously the unsolicited items far outweigh the things we bought. I would say though that not all of these were completely unsolicited. Quite a few items I’ve categorised this way as I ordered parcels before the month started, so in reality I did invite these in (it was just not this month) and it is something I am taking into consideration for the rest of the month – most things ordered off the internet will contain plastic in their packaging. I think most frustrating was the packet of paper straws in a plastic wrapper.
What has gone out
And, for your delight and delectation, I give you our week 1 rubbish….
Plastic – recyclable
As our primary focus at the moment is vastly reducing plastic, I’ll start with this.
This week – the circular thing is the insert in an olive oil bottle
Last week
Last July
High five us! You can see from the picture above that we have been working on this for a year, and our plastic going in the recycling had reduced (from about 300g per week to around 200g per week), but this challenge has supercharged our efforts and we had record low – only 36g!
Plus we emptied 3 tetrapaks which include plastic.
Full disclosure, this is not all the plastic (recyclable packaging) we emptied this week, we also emptied the two items below, but following the 5 Rs, we will put these to use for a while longer – the bottle I have kept to ecobrick some old plastic wrap waste, and the tortilla packet will be used for batch meals popped in the freezer for now. They will make it into the recycling at some point though, and these are items we are definitely not replacing this month.
To be reused for now
Non-recyclable waste
This includes all non-recyclable waste, plastic or not. Our efforts with reducing plastic so far this month have already had an impact on our non-recyclable waste. Again, have already been working on this for a year, but this challenge had given a boost. This time last year our non-recyclable waste was around 575g per week; last week it was around 200g per week; and this week, 76g.
This week
Last week
Last July 2018
A quick run down of what is left to remove:
Other recyclable waste
Metal – 328g
Glass – 335g
Paper and card – 498g
Does anyone have any knowledge of recyclable or at least compostable wrappers for butter and where they are sold? Anything else you are finding particularly difficult to source? Please do post any comments below!
A successful visit to the school second-hand sale today – 2 polos (with a couple of marks, but will be fine under pinafores), 2 school jumpers, and a pinafore dress. Combined with the bits and pieces I already had, I think we should be good for September now, apart from school shoes. Just a lot of name labels to sew on (35-year-old hand-me-downs from Mr MIHs Mum!).
Make It Happy 
