Giving Up Plastic

British Recycled Products

2011-04-10T12:29:00.001+01:00

British Recycled Plastic, in keeping with the aims of British Recycled Products, aims to help local authorities, schools, businesses, social enterprise and primary care trusts close the recycling loop by providing sustainable alternatives to traditional construction materials and maintenance-free outdoor furniture.

BRP is committed to sourcing and developing new products and markets for recycled materials, concentrating on transforming plastic into high quality, commercially viable recycled products, diverting it from landfill.

Sounds good to me. Though I must do some more research on issues surround recycling of plastic (energy consumption and carbon footprint compare with virgin plastic manufacture, contamination etc). Still I think my bottom line is always going to be that stopping plastic going into landfill is a good thing.

More on British Recycled Plastic can be found here.

Check out the planter bench

Eternal Lace

2011-04-09T12:18:00.000+01:00

How amazing is this?

Textile designer Laura Anne Marsden has developed a technique of making lace from old plastic bags. Simply stunning.

She uses it in decorations as above and jewellery

and even on cushions

More info at http://www.lauramarsden.com

More jewellery

2011-04-08T16:12:00.003+01:00

Forgive me for posting more jewellery but it's so beautiful.

These are made by the amzing Becky Crawford of myspacefruit.com from plastic bottles found washed up on the shores of Cornwall where she lives. She cuts them out by hand. Where does she find the time? Plenty more pieces to gawp at and buy here.

Ban Plastic Bags

2011-04-06T17:15:00.003+01:00

Even when I'm not giving up plastic for Lent I try always to have a reusable cotton bag with me for my shopping. I'm green like that you see. But convincing people one by one to stop using plastic bags is never going to have the same effect as a blanket ban on them.

Italy's done it.

Mexico City's passed a law giving authorities the power to fine businesses that give free plastic bags to their customers. Though I wonder whether such a law will ever be rigorously enough enforced.

And a whole heap of other countries have either banned them outright, or banned the thinnest ones, including Eritrea, Rwanda, South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania. In Ireland plastic bag used dropped by 90% once charges were introduced. Other countries have been charging or making noises about banning or charging including France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland.

La Belle France

2011-04-01T16:12:00.002+01:00

Well not so belle as far as plastic packaging goes it would appear.

Take a look at what one American expat finds in her local French supermarket.

At the risk of sounding like the greeniest treehugging treehugger anywhere, the planet really is too precious for plastic packaged single slices of ham, surely.

Plastic Seconds

2011-03-24T10:00:00.002Z

I know I promised you more on straws. But in the interim how cool is this

A necklace made from those fish shaped soy sauce bottles you get with takeaway sushi. I always though there ought to be a use for them but couldn't think of one. Genius.

From Plastic Seconds where you can find all sorts of other jewellery from plastic bits and bobs. How brilliant is designer Maria Papadimitriou.

Drinking Straws

2011-03-23T14:30:00.002Z

It's the straws that are getting to me. Good thing I haven't given up alcohol for Lent as the few times I've had non-alcoholic drinks in a pub they have come plastic straws. Each time I think 'I must remember next time to ask for no straw' but then by the time the next time comes I forget.

Why do pubs do this? And indeed when did they start doing it? For drinks in glasses? I remember as a child being given a bottle of something soft and fizzy and a a straw to drink whilst my brother and I sat outside in the garden, on the step or in a drab, empty side room (children were most definitely not allowed in pubs then). But I don't think any drink that was actually poured got a straw in it.

I do have some fond memories of straws. My mother kept an enormous box of them, paper ones, and for special treats we were allowed to have one to drink with. They were most definitely rationed. In fact so strong is my brother's memory of not being able to have a straw, and sense of being cheated out of something, that he is deliberately giving his small son straws on at random meal times rather than only on special occaions.

Then as what would probably now be called a tweenie, there were the coloured spiral ones that you got with drinks in Bernie Inns. We used to go there occasionally for lunch with a friend of mine and her mother as her father worked for the company that owned them and they got a discount. And we always ordered fancy drinks just for the fancy straws and cocketail umbrellas. And you could KEEP THE STRAWS. Such joy.

And I remember buying for my mother when she was ill with cancer a special long handled silver teaspoon, where the spoon handle was actually a silver straw. I figured it might make intake of fluids a bit more fun.

So straws can be special. But what a waste to have something you don't really need, only use once for a few minutes and then lies around in landfill for decades or longer. How did straws become so prevalent?

A bit of googling reveals that straw use actually goes back a long way. Almost definitely ancient peoples used actual straws., But then in 1888 Marvin Stone patented a process for manufacturing spiral-wound tubes. And the modern drinking straw was born. There's a great little article with pictures of the early patents here. Plastic straws became more popular in paper with the developments in plastic from the 1950's onwards. And if you'd ever wondered how plastic straws were made, the answer is extrusione.

Sadly (ed. really? sadly?), I can't seem to find any data for the number of plastic straws used and thrown away each week.

Rubbish

2011-03-22T11:33:00.002Z

OK, so despite my good intentions I've been rubbish at blogging here again this Lent.

And whilst we're on the subject of rubbish, check this out: The Art of Wearing Trash. Also on Facebook here.

First (and Second) Fail

2011-03-11T11:32:00.002Z

So I was on the rota to bring refreshements to choir last night. I baked biscuits (spiced oaty raisin ones and cheesy shortbread since you ask). And then on the way there I panicked that I hadn't made enough. So I stopped off to buy some extra. And of course everything is wrapped or packaged in plastic in some way. But it would appear my fear of social embarrassment (and lack of hospitality) is stronger than my Lenten discipline. For I did indeed buy a packet.

My first fail and it was only Day 2.

The second fail was not actually a failure to go plastic free. But rather I had thought to myself that I would collect all the plastic I did aquire over Lent and photograph it for this blog. Only I completely forgot to pick up the wrapper and bring it home with me.

So fail number two.

Plastic Free???

2011-03-10T11:26:00.002Z

OK, Ash Wednesday was plastic free. Or rather I bought no new plastic.

I did however use my plastic Oyster card to get my onto public transport with plastic coated seating and rails; make calls, texts and emails from my plastic phone, work on my plastic computer, write with my plastic biro, file papers in plastic sleeves, put plastic lights on my bike....

I could shift to using paper tickets rather than an Oyster card but I think that multiple tickets over years would probably have more environmental impact than one piece of plastic that gets recharged.

Not having a computer is not really a practical option given that I work for myself. But I can make every effort to ensure it lasts as long as possible. (I believe there are now computers that use bamboo instead of plastic as much as possible, will do some research on them.)

I have the bike lights already so better to use them until they wear out - however there's another area to research.

Is a mobile phone a luxury or a necessity? Certainly not having one would make my life quite difficult living and working as I do in a society where most people do.

But I can certainly look up greener paper filing options. And start carrying and using my fountain pen more rather than disposable biros.

Mea Culpa

2011-03-09T10:26:00.001Z

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

5% of the world’s people generate 40% of the world’s waste

Well it is Ash Wednesday.

Normally I'm not a big believer in bashing people over the head with guilt. It's not actually very helpful in creating change. But sometimes we just have to confess.....

So here it goes. I've done wrong. I've considered my own well being and convenience over and above the planet that supports me and the welfare of the generations to come. For the next six weeks I'll attempt to live lighter and better.

Shrove Tuesday 2011

2011-03-08T22:21:00.002Z

OK, so the plastic free blogging dwindled last year. But sure as eggs are eggs (and very tasty in pancakes) Lent will come round again. So here we are on Shrove Tuesday. I'm duly shriven (well I've confessed my lack of blogging sinning) and have filled up nicely on pancakes and found my login details (harder than you would imagine) and am all ready to give up plastic again this year.

And this time I will blog about it more. (Hopefully.)

Builders

2010-03-24T17:18:00.000Z

I mentioned earlier that having builders in needing to be fed copious quantities of tea had resulted in me buying milk in plastic bottles. I failed to mention that as they drank their way through all the tea in the house I also needed to buy more tea. Now I'm sure Unpackaged could have supplied me with plenty, but alas I needed tea now. (If I've learned nothing else it's that there may well be plastic free alternatives to many things but they may require planning and not be available to the spontaneous shopper). A perusal of the supermarket shelves for Fairtrade certified tea showed plently of boxes of teabags wrapped in plastic, a few boxes with no plastic wrapping (heads up to Teadirect), and a few unplastic wrapped boxes of loose tea. However I'm assuming all of them would have the bags or the tea in "foil" bags within the boxes and I think the foil is really plastic these days. So there's another fail.

However the bigger way that I've completely fallen down on my plastic free Lent is in the building materials. The builders are actually doing work on my garden and the raised beds are now lined with plastic. So far so 'oh well at least it's for something long lasting'. But alas, deliveries of sand and cement have come in plastic sacks; the brick were shrink wrapped in plastic and the dumper bags full of soil appear to have been dumped in the skip rather than re-used. (Though I'm hopeful that if I post on Freecycle that they're there someone may find a use for them)

So really in the light of all that plastic the odd straw, or drink container lid or Timeout wrapping seems restrained.

More Confessions

2010-03-22T17:15:00.000Z

(Now why does that sounds slightly dodgy?)

I forgot in my earlier Confessions (ah, shades of St Augustine) to mention straws. Drinking straws that is. I've probably had about five or six now in various drinks ordered in pubs and restaurants from lime soda (my non-alcoholic drink of choice) to fruit juices.

Sigh, I guess I'll just have to stick with wine. And gin. And beer.

For the sake of the planet you understand.

Oh no.....

2010-03-22T16:38:00.002Z

I've been having quite a few "oh no...." moments over the last few weeks of giving up plastic.

I finished up my Marmite. Cant buy a new jar as they have plastic lids....oh no.

I used up my deodorant and toothpaste. Oh no. Can I find replacements without plastic.....watch this space.

My Freeview box appears to have broken. Can't replace it because it's made from plastic. Oh no. (Though my father pointed out it may just be the fuse - I still need to check though unless I can find the spare fuses I have somewhere in the house I may still be TV-less as any new fuses will come packaged in plastic.) So there's an interesting unintended consequence of giving up plastic, I appear to have given up TV as well. I'd love to say that I'm filling the time reading spiritually developing books (it is Lent after all) or even books and research about plastic, but that doesn't appear to have happened.

Tweet Tweet

2010-03-21T16:44:00.000Z

Talking of tweeting. I'm hashtagging all my plastic related tweets as #givingupplastic. If you're a Tweeter do take a look.

If you don't tweet this will make no sense.

Sorry.

Confession Time

2010-03-20T16:28:00.000Z

Well it is Lent after all.....

I have been getting a bit slack about this giving up plastic malarky. A couple of times recently I have had takeaway drinks in cardboard cups with the little plastic lids.

Once I was in Leon on Regent St. Now Leon if you don't know it is a fabulous concept, aiming to be a healthy fast food chain. Their food is very scrumptious and I love the way they think about food. So I had ordered a Ginger Steeper (basically just chunks of raw ginger with hot water - delicious but oh my, their profit margins must be huge on this one) to have in. And before I could stop him my server had sorted out the drink and then plonked a plastic top on it. And did the same to my companions'.

Now I could have taken the time to ask him to take it off, and explained that I'd given up plastic, but you know, sometimes you just can't be bothered to have the conversation. And, given that it had already gone on the cup I assume they would have had to through it away anyway rather than be able to re-use it.

However this story does have a postscript for I follow one of the founders and directors of Leon on Twitter. So I tweeted @henry_leon to ask if he could sort it so this didn't happen again. And he said it would. If anyone's near the Regent Street Leon do go in and check. And maybe have some food while you're there, it's fabulous.

The other time was a free tea offered to me in Pret.

I've also been buying milk a plenty in plastic bottles. Because I have builders. And they require tea. And haven't got organised enough to have a milk delivery in glass bottles or to make it down to the wonderful Unpackaged enough to pick up a proper bottle there. But plastic bottles deserve their own post. As do plastic bags.

Unpackaged

2010-03-18T14:29:00.002Z

Taking a walk around the average supermarket when you've given up plastic is an exercise in not being able to buy anything. For everything it would appear can only be sold if it comes contained by or encased in plastic. From apples to cheese, bread to yoghurt, meat to fish, drinks to icecream and beyond, all come with a side helping of plastic.

I've had to give up my beloved caramelized onion hummous but it's yoghurt I've found hardest. (When I gave up plastic last Lent I did track down some buffalo milk yoghurt at the Stoke Newington Farmers Market and then attempted to make my own using it as a starter but it wasn't very successful)

So enter the great lifesaver that is Unpackaged.

Unpackaged was started by Catherine Conway in 2006 in the belief there had to be a better way to sell food than wrapped up in plastic, a woman clearly after my own heart. It started life as a market stall (and if I remember correctly you could also buy from certain offices) and now has a very cute shop on Amwell Street in Islington, London.

Basically you take along your own containers to fill up with basic provisions such as oats and flour and dried fruit (well that's an essential in my house) and pulses and cereals and all sort of other yummies. (If you don't have your own you can use a lightweight bags, but they'd much rather you brought your own and currently offer a substantial discount for doing so). They also do a heap of other stuff apart from dried goods but more on that anon.

Buying loose is not exactly a new thing, I remember when I used to visit my brother in Newcastle there was a fabulous shop in the covered market there where you could go and get flour and so forth by the scoopful, but Unpackaged is also concerned about the product as well as the packaging with most goods being either organic or Fairtrade. Yay.

And, oh glory be, you can also buy yoghurt there. It comes in a huge tub which gets refilled each week and you ladle as much as you want into your own pot.

Here's Cathering totting up my purchases

Unpackaged 42 Amwell Street, London ,EC1R 1XT
Monday – Friday 10am – 7pm, Saturday 9am – 6pm, Sunday 10am – 3pm. Closed Bank Holidays

In praise of… public drinking fountains

2010-03-14T14:44:00.001Z

Interesting piece in The Guardian on why we should revive public drinking fountains instead of buying bottled water

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/22/water-public-drinking-fountains

Oatcakes

2010-03-10T17:23:00.003Z

I was craving some oatcakes. But they all come in lovely plastic wrapping inside those rustic looking cardboard tubes. So I thought I'd make some.

It did seem to require quite a lot of plastic though, albeit plastic that I use and use and use. See my food processor (it was actually my mother's, bought some time in the 1980s), plastic measuring jug and plastic weighing scale bowl drying here. (Note also the plastic tin opener at the back) Sigh - plastic really does rule our lives.

(The white and green cup is my amazing Keepcup about which I'll write more anon)

Oh, and here's the oatcake recipe. It's traditional Scottish from Florence Marian McNeill (Recipes from Scotland (Gordon Wright, £7.95)) found via Rose Prince in the Telegraph (ain't google handy)

Combine 125g medium oatmeal with a pinch each of salt and bicarbonate of soda and one teaspoon of lard, dripping or butter, then add enough hot water to bind all together to make a stiff paste.

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. To shape the oatcakes, scatter dry oatmeal on to a board and roll out to a thin round sheet. Work quickly, because the dough will be sticky and you will need to keep flipping it over, dusting with more oatmeal to prevent sticking. Use a plate to cut a round, then transfer to a lightly greased baking sheet. Cut into quarters and bake until crisp and slightly curled at the edge.

They were yum.

Mail Fails

2010-03-07T16:07:00.002Z

OK, so I've been trying to give up plastic but I've also been failing. My post is partly to blame.

My weekly copy of Time Out comes wrapped in plastic - I really ought to stop the subscription but I haven't been organised to do so yet. I've also had a couple of catalogues appear likewise encased in flimsy plastic.

Though interestingly others are not. Big thumbs up to Boden and the fair trade clothing company People Tree who both just print the address right on the catologue. (Both of these companies used to use the dreaded plastic shrink wrapping so I wonder what's changed them. The environment or cost? Certainly the Boden catalogue is on much cheaper paper with cheaper binding now.) The ever wonderful Lakeland (formerly Lakeland Plastics, oh the irony) send theres in one of those paper envelopes with a window. I don't think the window is actually oil based plastic (you can certainly pop them in with the paper recycling) so I think that's OK though I am now wondering what the window actually is made of.

Moving onto newspapers, not quite mail I know but if I lived in the kind of area where the local newsagent did home deliveries it would come through the letter box so I'm going to count it here. I only buy newspapers at the weekend. If I read one in the week it's because I was out and about in London and picked up a free one (on that note how about the Evening Standard reporting on poverty in London last week).

So the first Saturday of Lent I stumbled into the newsagent to pick up my usual paper only to discover that half of it was wrapped in plastic. Gargh. My choices seemed to be limited to The Times, the Indy, the Mail or the tabloids (does The Mail count as a tabloid?). I seem to have a knee jerk reaction against Murdoch which ruled The Times out and actually like decent content to my papers which ruled out all the others except the Independent. So thumbs up to the Indy and big thumbs down to The Guardian and The Telegraph.

Next fails: ablutions and travel....reportage coming soon.

Why give up plastic?

2010-02-24T10:08:00.004Z

So why give up plastic? After all it's an amazing material, it can be hard or soft, it can and is (as I shall no doubt discover) used in a myriad of different ways. It's relatively cheap and has transformed our high streets in under a century (compare the things we buy now to the things our grandparents bought). It's relatively light surely thus requiring less fuel to transport than alternatives such as a tin, ceramic, glass, wood and so forth and isn't that more eco?

As a concerned but not expert consumer (hmm actually I am rather an expert consumer, aren't we all, I mean of course not an expert on plastic) there are two main reasons I'm trying to give it up....

The first is what it's made from. Oil. Which is both polluting and rapidly running out.

Image from www.treehugger.com

And the second is the legacy it leaves: the pollution, the impact on wildlife and the fact that it takes for ever and ever (from hundreds to thousands of years depending on the plastic) to degrade.

It all just seems wrong to me, destroying the planet for my convenience and wallet. But I'll freely admit that this is a bit of a gut reaction, I'd like to know more about the actual science behind plastic and its impact on the world and hopefully this focus giving up plastic for Lent will also give me the impetus to do some further research. And blog about it of course.

Why give up something for Lent?

2010-02-22T15:37:00.006Z

So I guess there are two obvious questions people ask when I say I've given up plastic for Lent: why plastic and why give up things for Lent. There's also a more detailed question about what exactly I mean by giving up plastic.

So let's get the Lent one out of the way first. For me the really simple answer is 'because I always have'. It was something we did as children and I've carried it on. The more complex answer, still at a personal level, is that yes, there is a spiritual discipline about it. It is tied into my faith, even though I fluctuate wildly as to what I actually believe and why, I do still continue to have some kind of faith and it is primarily rooted in and experienced through the Christian tradition. It is also tied into my belief in the importance of ritual. I'm also a strong believer in the discipline of denial - giving something up is very different to taking something up, though both are good. I could frame 'giving up plastic' as 'living a more environmentally positive lifestyle' but I find the language of 'giving up' actually more helpful.

As to why people give up something for Lent in the first place - well of course that's tied to Lenten fasting. I can do no better than point you in the direction of Maggi Dawn the Cambridge based theologian and priest. She has a good post here on the corporate/communal aspect of Lenten fasting and she starts her explanation here though it's also very worth clicking on the Lent tag in her sidebar and reading all the entries as she comes back to it on an annual basis (funny that). She's also written a book Giving It Up which I really must buy.

In the meantime I leave you with this:

"Lent – it’s supposed to be good for the body AND the soul. It’s supposed to simplify your life for a while, giving you time and money to re-focus. It’s not supposed to feed your vanity by taking off a dress size, but to give you the space to rediscover the true value of life, framed by a fresh vision of God. What part of your consumer lifestyle will you give up, for a while, to get your life into a new gear?" Maggi Dawn

Ash Wednesday

2010-02-17T16:49:00.001Z

"Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return"

Lent begins today and this year whilst others give up chocolate or alcohol or meat (or indeed nothing at all) I am giving up plastic.

I did this for the first time last year and it proved to be an interesting, and difficult, forty days. So I thought it would be worth trying again this year. And to blog my time in the plastic free wilderness.

Or almost plastic free. For so all pervasive is plastic now that I don't think it's actually possible to live in 21st century Britain without it. But I'm going to try not to gather any new plastic over these forty days. I'm also going to be looking at the issues around plastic: from the raw ingredient (usually oil) to the end disposal. And the alternatives.