What’s Plastic Free July all about?

Plastic Free July is nearly over and here’s my nearly “plastic free” update. My colleagues and I at the Sustainable Business Network decided to try and walk the talk this month, by participating in Plastic Free July.  On the work front that is quite easy. It’s really at home where the plastic heart is for me. Rules of the game in this house were simple – avoid all plastic purchases for the month but keep any wrappers from previous purchasing decisions.  It’s a little cheesy in a “hug a seal” kind of way, but my motivation for taking part is purely ocean focused.  I cringe at the thought of turtles trapped in plastic in the ocean and the knowledge that fish cannot swim backwards, so once inside our plastic pollution, they’re stuck.

How are we tracking?

So far we have bought a block of cheese (which is wrapped in plastic), had a few beer bottle lids (cheeky things, they have a plastic lining!) and my disposable contact lens cases.  The rest of the items that feature in our “Dilemma Box”* are hangovers from former, less thought through purchases, or gifts from people that we inherited, including our house mate’s loot. In our household we decided to include all plastic, not just the recommended single use, in order to better understand our consumer impact.

*A dilemma box is a nice way of collating those little plasticy items and reflecting on them.

Top dilemma items

1. Plastic wrapping for a pack of EarthCare toilet paper, that’s a tricky one!
2. Plastic around cheese – we love cheese!
3. A plastic sleeve that arrived around a card someone sent us. 
4. A restaurant served us miso soup in takeaway cups, even though we were dining in. Damn we wish it was in bowls…  So the lids made it into the dilemma box
5. Beer bottle lids have plastic inside, after discovering this we switched to wine. (Not to mix up Dry July with Plastic Free July and complicate life further)
6. I’m allergic to hard contact lenses, so I use disposables and those nasty little things add up my plastic impact

Key learnings

There is always a trade-off: 

A dilemma item for us was milk bottles. We avoid Tetra Pak because this isn’t recycled in New Zealand, so plastic bottles from milk are a common item in our fridge. This month we joined a friend on her milk run. She is part of a milk collective that orders weekly and gets farm gate raw organic milk from Drury, South Auckland, in their reuseable jars. Trade off: For us this meant driving a good 15 minutes from our house to collect milk once a week.  We usually don’t drive during the week so it seemed a little silly that we were suddenly driving for milk! Regardless, Plastic Free July gave us the chance to try raw, local, organic milk and avoid added permeate (watery by-product of milk processing. Some dairy companies add it into milk to dilute or substitute the protein levels throughout the year).

Sometimes plastic is useful: In healthcare products in particular, it keeps things nice and sealed.

Buying in bulk helps to avoid plastic – Photo: Emily Dowding-Smith

We need to be more organised: Glass jars for storing bulk items, buying ingredients to make your own food, like muesli, bread and tortillas, requires a bit of planning ahead.

Non-plastic items are often more expensive: Glass is heavier and more expensive. Even items like soap can be more expensive when wrapped in paper. This is a generalisation but the best example is cheese – we tried to alter our cheese eating habits by purchasing cheese from our local farmers market. But that ends up being $5 per 100 grams for local, organic cheese that I was hoping to be wrapped in paper. It was sold to us in aluminium foil! Oh dear…

There are plenty of plastic free treats available once you start looking – check out these Dr FeelGood ice pops made in NZ – Regram from @DoctorFeelGoodIcePops

You find fun new alternatives to plasticy items, it just might take longer: We made our own tasty granola, discovered cardboard wrapped ice blocks for a treat. And we have also been making our own tortillas from masa flour to avoid buying packaged ones. Fresh is best, super tasty and healthy.

Some things you can easily do without: In our case, yoghurt was an easy thing to forgo this month and we haven’t really missed it.  We haven’t had corn chips either and that is probably better for us!

Can you counter-plastic?

Plastic sack found at the beach, an attempt to clean up to offset my plastic dilemma

I tried to offset some of the items in my dilemma box by picking this massive lump of plastic out of Cox’s Bay at low tide. Saving the fish from entrapment and cleaning up the harbour makes me feel a little better about my dilemma box even if it’s not quite the same… but you get my drift.

It’s a wrap!

In summary, plastic is everywhere and is damn hard to completely avoid.
It’s in all my electronic devices and items around me. Even if I can’t see it the plastic poltergeist floats in behind my food and health items from the production, manufacturing, distribution through to the shop. Even if I’m not wearing or using plastic directly it would have been involved in some part of my item’s lifetime.

But among all this, as a consumer, you do have the power to cut out the final layer by making conscious decisions.

The boxes that the crates of my bulk binned food arrived in New Zealand in would have been wrapped in plastic, but at least I’m not having plastic at point of sale or risking the wrapper blowing away.  This makes me feel a little better, especially as it’s those items that end up in our rivers and oceans.
The biggest thing Plastic Free July has given us is a discussion point and a way to alter some of our behaviours and check in on our habits, because everyone can improve, no matter how plastic-free their lives are.

Emily Dowding-Smith is the Transformation Leader for Restorative Food at the Sustainable Business Network. When she’s not trying to restore our food system and catalyse riparian planting on the Million Metres Streams project, she is a keen diver, bike tourer and ocean conserver recently snorkelling in the Arctic to raise awareness about sea ice melt and the impacts of climate change.

The idea of ‘good food’ is of course relative to the person, the situation and perhaps whether you’re suffering from the ‘Sunday-morning-flu’. These days ‘good food’ can mean more than just who in town has the best hollandaise on their eggs benedict.

Good food can be much broader and depending on what you value it can encompass such things as ethically sourced ingredients; free-range and organic options; food that is prepared in a sustainable environment, where waste is minimised and managed smartly; perhaps has sustainably caught seafood on the menu; and ideally uses fantastic in-season, local ingredients.

Up until recently it has been incredibly difficult to judge which businesses do well at this stuff. Enter the good folk at Conscious Consumers NZ. These guys and gals have come up with an accreditation scheme to help consumers make more sustainable and ethical choices in the hospitality sector. One of the best things about this system is that it is incredibly easy to use and is *free* for consumers to use. Businesses that sign up and pay the annual fee are are awarded any mix of up to 12 ‘badges’ in areas they can prove they perform in. Ultimately the scheme functions via a *free* app where you can check out who locally (limited cities in NZ currently as they build the brand) is operating within 12 areas of sustainability. These badges fit neatly within three categories,  Smart waste, ethical products and community. This way you can identify the values that you most closely align with, be it organic, eco-packaging or sustainable seafood.

Local	Generosity
BYO containers	Recycling	Eco-packaging	Composting	Eco-cleaners
Free range	Fair trade	Sustainable Seafood	Vegetarian/Vegan	Organic

Businesses are reviewed annually to ensure they still fit the criteria of the badges they hold. Businesses pay an annual fee to be profiled on the Conscious Consumer website as part of the package. If you’re interested in the nuts and bolts of the accreditation process you can check this out.

Fancy a deal?

On the app you can set your preferences of cities and favourite businesses. From time to time businesses offer rewards or deals to customers that use the app.

Sometimes you’ll see a sign in a shop, usually at the counter with a QR code on it advertising either their business and/or their current deal. 

Bravo

This is a great, if not basic, way to identify businesses that share the same values as you and support them with your custom. The app is free and I recommend you give it a whirl. It’s not hugely scientific, but it is evidence based. Personally I think this is a great start in the right direction and primarily exists with the well-meaning consumer (that’s you) in mind.

Feel good factor

It’s great to see that these like-minded businesses can measure their positive impacts.

Check out these stats (correct at time of publishing, otherwise see up-to-date stats here)

Each year our businesses spend $1,002,000 on organic food and beverages.

Each year our businesses spend $9,538,100 on local food and beverages.

Each year our businesses save 1,311,300 containers potentially going to landfill.

Each year our businesses help 21,200 animals avoid factory-style farming.

Why not download the app now? It’s available on both apple and android platforms from here