Plastic Free July!

It's here! Welcome to Plastic Free July!

I'm doin' it for the third year and its a really thought provoking challenge. It motivates me to be a little creative and make some noise about stupid disposable plastic. The challenge was invented by the wonderful Rebecca Prince-Ruiz who I'm fortunate enough to work with (yes, I feel I need to make a full conflict of interest statement and say that Plastic Free July is an initiative of WMRC Earth Carers - my work). So Rebecca came to work one day three years ago and said, 'Hey, lets have a challenge where we don't use any plastic next month' and we all said great idea. Then the reality of how tricky that is hit home. Well what I've found is that its pretty easy to avoid about 80% of the disposable plastic you'd normally use and pretty tricky to get rid of the last 20%. It started off with around 40 people doing it in 2011, and now thousands are doing it. The challenge is on Facebook and there is a website to get lots of ideas.

But this blog is about us and our challenges - so I'm going to be brutally honest about our successes and our failures. First of all the admission that to get Quincey on board for PJF I've had to bribe him with...plastic, in the form of Lego. Now I actually don't take issue with Lego itself because it is wonderful stuff and has been for generations. It teaches kids hand eye skills and allows them to be very creative. Like my friend Rebecca said, you can tell its good plastic because you never find it in bulk rubbish or doing a beach clean up. And Quincey just loves it. But why, oh why does it have to come in plastic in cardboard. Just in cardboard is fine. Here is a pic of our last Lego purchase - good and bad plastic.

I'm going to attempt to post on the Sustainaburbia FB page one plastic free alternative every day - lets see how that goes! First one will be my home preserved pears with honey, lemon and vanilla. I found out recently that cans are lined with plastics that contain the chemical BPA (bisphenol A) that are (among other things) endocrine disrupters. Like lots of things to do with sustainability there is often more than one reason to make some changes in behaviour - in this case there are environmental and health reasons to avoid plastic. So in order to avoid them I'll be doing a lot more home preserving! Home preserving is fun and pretty easy once you get your gear and have a go. Yum!

The peeled pears that Ads picked up on his way home from a field trip (low food miles!)

 Pears, sugar, lemon, honey and vanilla in the pot.

Tools of the trade.

 The finished product!