I've officially fallen off the wagon of photographing my plastic waste. I blame this on spending the week in three different places, first in the van, then at my in-laws and then at home. Here instead is my collection of paper bags from the week...
The plastic waste I can remember
Cat treat bag - I think pet food is another category that seems overwhelming, I'm certainly not willing to start making cat food from scratch. Plus he gets the special dental blend to reduce vet bills. No, I am not willing to brush the cat's teeth instead. I like my fingers.
Licorice bag - another pre-July purchase that's just been finished, though we found some licorice at the bulk food shop so purchased that instead. Snacks are proving one of the hardest categories to purchase plastic free.
More cracker liner bags - trying to make crackers is on the agenda, we've got one more box left but maybe I'll save those for when we have a cracker emergency.
In doing more reading around a few of the questions that have been raised during plastic aware July I've discovered some more alarming facts today’s share is bag materials.
Apparently paper bags take four times the amount energy to produce that an equivalent plastic bag. A pretty stark reminder that maybe 'plastic free' shouldn't be the measure but part of a wider goal.
In fact many of the alternatives to plastic need to be reused much more than it's plastic equivalent in order to offset the additional energy in production. Paper bags three times, longer life bags four times, cotton bags 131 times.
I appreciate that production is one of the considerations along with waste management but it comes back to the question of what is the ultimate goal. Eliminating plastic or reducing an environmental impact?
I'd presume the main goal of the plastic free July campaign is actually awareness and highlighting the issues of plastic and showing alternatives. But are we responsible consumers if we simply shift from a plastic waste issue to a timber production and management issue in simply switching to how we bring products home?
Maybe we need to think about what’s in the bag as well, the same article suggests packaging is only 5% of the food systems footprint!
The paper bags will get reused if I can convince the cat there’s nothing interesting to be found in them. We use them to collect food from the bulk store and the farmers market and then instead of baking paper in the oven and then into the worm farm.