A month without plastic.

This has come about from a web link I saw where a BBC reporter tried to go a month without plastic last August. She was relatively successful as she reduced her plastic purchase by 80% but for someone like me, and indeed many other green / greener people this will be harder as I already have a limited use of plastic however starting 1st of January 2009 I'll give this a whirl.

The BBC reporter stopped using plastic bags for her fruit and veg, I did this 15 years ago,lol. She went to local butchers and deli's etc, I've been doing this for ages. She used terry nappies and some Eco friendly nappies, At 19 my son is well out of nappies now so this will not apply. I make my own shopping bags so no carriers needed, I use paper bags to pick up the dog waste of my gorgeous red setter so no( even biodegradable)plastic bags there. I'll have to find a way of buying cheese without plastic and I'll need to get the yogurt maker out again. I bought a lot of cheese from a farmers market before Christmas and it looked as if it was in waxed paper but on close inspection it is lined with a thin poly sheet...Hmmmm.

I got some free yeast from Asda yesterday so that will last a few weeks but I may have to take a small container with me mid month for some more.

One thing I will have to reluctantly buy during this months trial will be milk in plastic bottles as we don't have a delivery service in my area.

I'll try to update this every couple of days so why not check back to this blog to see how I get on and even leave a comment.

P.S. If you click on the title of this post it will take you to the BBC site for the original story.

January 1st, 2009;

Went ok as we haven't been out today but I did have nightmares about buying milk in plastic bottles last night,lol.
Still Andy at self sufficientish gave me a website called find your milkman. I thought that we didn't have a local milkman anymore but it seems we do so I'll be calling them tomorrow, Friday to check prices etc. It's ok being green but if the prices are prohibitive then I'll find an alternative use for the 4 pint plastic bottles.

January 2nd, 2009.

Still no joy on finding out a price for the milk delivered in plastic fee bottles. I expect it to be around 50p per pint which would make it expensive for me.
I went into town today and had a look at some indipendant butchers and all had plastic sheeting and carrier bags for produce. I was going to ask about supplying my own containers bit decided not to as they were quite busy. I needed something for tea so I ended up at Asda, my usual haunt for good food at cheaper prices although they were quite quick to up prices last year as and when they felt like it. I guess I shouldn't grumble but little things like 2 pence on a pack of 500g mince might only be 2 pence but when you buy 1 a day for feeding the dog it works out at £7.30 a year or nearly 4 bags of mince. Cooked ham went up by £1 per 400g and corned beef went up from £2.98 for 3 tins to over £5.00. Again processed food which in a healthy diet should be cut out but isn't always...

Anyway, back to the shoping. I ended up buying 4 chicken portions and these were on a plastic type tray, recycle symbol 5 in a triangle and a packet of chillie's. Now I came across the chillies first and put them back as they were in plastic and i knew that the local greengrocer had chillies loose so I got the chicken and then went to the grocer........ He was closed. Back to Asda and after buying the chicken I decided to get the chillies so the upshot was wasted petrol and plastic wrapping.

So a month without any new plastic lasted 1 day in truth but I'll change the goalposts and say a month reducing plastic.....


January 3rd, 2009.
Yesterday I was speaking of moving the goalposts in my quest to be plastic free for amonth and today Hartlepool United turned over premiership team Stoke in the FA Cup 3rd round. Bring on Liverpool away from home for a nice pay day for the club.

January 5th.

Yesterday the 4th Went by without any hitch so that's ok. Today however is another matter. Went food shopping as normal for tea, I try to buy local and daily or for every two days so all the produce is used up. This way if I have anything left I know before I go out what I need for the tea ( evening meal) or if it's leftovers.

I was planning the route to take to go to the local small indi shops and thinking of how much time this would take got me thinknig.... I know really dangerous but I did it none the less. I Went to the bank to get some cash as this is then all I have to spend and thus can't get tempted. Got back to the veg shop and bought the veg and a 25 kg sack of spuds mainly because they were in a paper sack and hence no plastic bags but they will get used up no problem. Then it was over town to a fishmongers to get some scampi and then into Asda to buy some mince for my lovely red setter and a tin of mushy peas... well you can't have scampi without mushy peas can you? While I was in the fishmongers I bucked up the courage to ask if I took a plastic box in would they fill it with the fish rather than use plastic bags etc... No problem they said so that was cool. If any of you are in Harltepool go to kings wet fish shop in Thornton Street... really magical fishy place or should that be plaice?

This took me about 75 minutes and 8 miles of petrol in a car that is currently doing 15 miles to the gallon around town but I avoided plastic bags. On the other hand I could have driven 3/4 of a mile to Asda and bought it all in one go and in about 30 minutes but the fish and potatoes and maybe some of the veg would have been in the plastic bags. Then there are the food miles that we are all being bashed around the head with and in my case it doesn't have to be food miles by air for peas from tanzania etc but the 8 miles I did in the gas guzzler car yesterday. Because it's a v6 it pumps out 268g of CO2 per km driven. 8 miles is roughly 12.832 Km so on my little soujourn to the shop yesterday I pumped out 3.438976 kg of CO2........BUT I SAVED SOME PLASTIC BAGS..
I guess there has to be a compromise somewhere but it seems the deeper you go into the actual mechanics of saving the planet that these compromises depend on your particular interests such as zero waste to landfill or no burning fossil fuels for heating or renewable energy. The one thing that is very obvious to me as I go on this month is that you can't save the planet without it costing you money on a personal level.

Also whilst in Asda I forgot to get the dogs mince so I had to go back in the evening to get that so not really that sucessfull of a day.

January 6th.

As an update to the price of the milk I was writing about on the 1st of January I finally got a response today. Apparently we do have a milkman who serves my area... he comes from the Middlesborough depot which is about 15 miles away at the closest and they do have doorstep deliveries in 1 pint glass bottles.......AT 62 PENCE A PINT I mean come on, I know saving the planet costs money but my house go through around 3 pints of milk a day so that's 21 pints a week and it currently costs me £1.53 for 4 pints in plastic bottles. for the same 4 pints delivered in glass bottles it would cost me £2.48 or comparisons for a week being £8.03 for asda in plastic or £13.02 a week in glass.....

Ok then 101 uses for a plastic 4 pint milk bottle... start your answers here.....