Plastic

[BoxOfShreddies]

Blue Planet really raised peoples awareness. Please don't let that stop. If everyone does just a tiny bit we can all help.

We've made a conscious effort to reduce plastic. We and the DC have metal drinking bottles for water at school now. We use the net ecobags when we're shopping so fresh fruit and veg doesn't go in plastic bags. We use bars of soap instead of liquid handwash in a plastic bottle. They're small things but it's something.
Any more ideas gratefully recieved.

www.theoceancleanup.com/press/great-pacific-garbage-patch-growing-rapidly-study-shows/
Or BBC
www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43490235

Reusable nappies

Have small families/no children at all. I think the order of impact by being 'eco-friendly' goes first don't have children, secondly be vegan. Although I may be misremembering. It makes sense though.

Buy bamboo toothbrushes, instead of plastic ones.

We had a thread on this recently. I will suggest again getting a Sodastream. I refuse to buy bottled water of any sort when there is nothing wrong with our tap water but I do like fizzy water - voila, the Sodastream!

I've been toying with getting one, davros.

Re the open bins for dry goods - there may be some issues with avoiding contamination. I once bought some unpackaged dog biscuits....next thing I knew, my store cupboard was infested with weevils and I had to bin flour etc. So that ended up sadly wasteful.

I feel the same about bin bags - we all put our rubbish in there then bury it in the ground.

I used to be able to get degradable ones from the supermarket about 10 years ago, but they eventually discontinued them and they weren't expensive in comparison.

And then there's nappy sacks, and dog poo bags.........all buried in land fill......

The manufacturers are to blame as like said up thread we the user are then left with the problem, when it should the manufacturers making the stuff in the first place.

Errol yes there are collapsible coffee cups (though still bigger than a fold up bag)

Furball Naty make biodegradable nappy sacks, though they cost more than the plastic ones. Also could be used as dog poo bags. I haven't seen biodegradable binbags though, that would be good.

I think last time I went to pets at home, all their poo bags were biodegradable. I think they had some large enough to use as nappy sacks, if they're hard to find elsewhere.

When our council was accepting food waste tried biodegradable caddy bags but they degraded before the caddy was full so they were worse than useless. Maybe it's not easy to make a full size biodegradable bin bag fit for purpose.

One of the easiest things I've done to help limit my use of one-use plastic is to get a veg box delivered. I use Riverford, and they are really, really good. Almost all the veg comes without extra packaging, and when they do use plastic (very occasionally, with salad) you can return the packaging to them to recycle. They also have been trialling a new kind of mesh bag which is made from birch and is entirely compostable - but even with that they hardly use mesh bags anyway.

As a nice bonus it means that it leaves me with much less junk to put in both my recycling bag and in my rubbish bin.

errolthedragon the cheapest Sodastream I can find is £59 on Amazon. It looks like it comes with a Co2 canister and plastic bottle. You can get extra bottles of 1L and 500ml so you can take a smaller one out and about with you. I exchange the gas canisters in Argos. I never use the flavours. Although it's a biggish outlay it's well worth it imo. Go for it!!