This month is Plastic Free July. We're going to give you some tips on how to be plastic-free. It's great that plastic bags are banned at the counter now but there is still plenty of plastic we can avoid when shopping.
How to Limit Plastic Bag Use
- Store cloth bags in your car and/or handbag so you always have them when you out shopping. Don't accept bags from stores, instead use your cloth bags. The trick is to put them straight back in the car or in your bag when you've emptied them
- Don't buy fruit and veges pre-packaged in plastic, instead choose the loose items. Use your own small cloth bags or paper bags to collect them
- Use cardboard boxes from the supermarket to carry your shopping
- Buy fresh bread in paper bags, or even better make your own bread
- Ask the butcher to wrap meats directly into paper or take your own reusable containers. Our butcher (Wholly Cow in Hamilton and Cambridge) is more than happy fill our containers, also their packaging is compostable and they take it back for their worm farm.
- Buy bulk as much as you can to avoid over packaged products, then decant or free-flow when you get home. Buy items from the bulk bins using jars, paper, or cloth bags.
- Use newspaper to line your rubbish bin instead of a plastic bag - check out this website for more details or even go liner-free like we now are. Buy paper rubbish sacks instead of the plastic ones from your supermarket, they are surprisingly tough. To avoid mess and smell in your bin start composting, a worm farm, or get chickens for your scraps. Or you can put your wet scraps in a container in the freezer until rubbish day. But remember food scraps turn into methane in the landfill so composting, worm farms, or chickens are a better option.
- Instead of using plastic bags when walking the dog use newspaper to wrap up their business. Or you could look into cornstarch-based compostable bags online or from your pet supplier, then have a dedicated pet poo composting area.
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