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!

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!

And I found someone else locally who is also doing Plastic-Free July – exciting!

Fails – apple stickers.

Unsolicited items – sweet bag.

 

 

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.

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.

Butter in paper in Warwickshire – is there 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

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’.

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

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.

No fails!

Not much happening today after a late night yesterday. No purchases.

We did eat some of our paper wrapped barbeque meat that we bought on Friday, mmm.

Fails

None.

Unsolicted items

None.

 

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.

Fails

None.

Things we couldn’t buy

None.

Unsolicited items

As above, netting and sequins.

 

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!

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.

Things we couldn’t buy

None.

Unsolicited items

None.