I vividly remember during a trip north to Newcastle at the end of 2019 having a conversation with Mr SW about sustainability, recycling and the environment. The devastating bushfire season was underway and I was seeing a couple of themes emerge on people's responses.
First, the government should 'fix' it, a discussion for another day.
Second was the spirit of raising money, but built on the premise of buy my stuff and I will donate the profit to charity. Buy more stuff? Isn't this part of the problem? Even if the acrylic keyring/beaded jewellery/leather planner/watercolour artwork is made from sustainable materials it still needs to be shipped to the buyer, the supplies and the packaging purchased. More purchasing, more shipping, more storage.
Is that really the answer?
If supporting a charitable cause was the real motivator then simply donating would be more effective! Not giving to get. Just giving to give. Not paying for materials, packaging, postage and purchase fees. Just donating to charity, direct and simple (oh and tax deductible).
Frustrated with both themes Mr SW and I committed to creating a sustainable plan in both senses of the word, sustainable we could keep it up and sustainable good for the environment. Rather than trying to rid our lives of all plastic immediately (sound familiar?) we agreed to tackle one thing at a time.
First we identified the items that we purchase that are packaged in plastic and then what we use the most or what has the most plastic.
So ended up we agreeing to two items:
- Lettuce - we bought two cos in a plastic bag
- Pasta - we bought the supermarket version in a plastic packet
I'll admit I'm not sure we kept up the one thing at a time, it's July and I can only recall dedicated action on these two items.
But how did that work out?
- Lettuce was actually pretty easy, we simply stopped buying that particular variety, tried iceberg BUT I am NOT a fan. Now we buy from the farmers' market.
- Pasta proved, and continues to prove, more difficult. I cannot find pasta without plastic, even the boxed pasta has a plastic window! The fresh pasta = plastic. The fancy pasta = plastic. The bulk buy pasta = $$$ fancy grain pasta or animal shapes! We switched to the boxed version to reduce but have no solution to remove short of homemade but I will need to source pasta flour, which I have not found locally.
Though we didn't stick with the one thing approach we did switch to farmers' market groceries which dealt with a few things like carrots in bags, cherry tomatoes in boxes, potatoes in bags and onions in those woven sacks (I'm not even sure if they're plastic but they are certainly unnecessary).
I can say it's only day two of my Plastic Aware July and I'm already overwhelmed but I'll pop back with a weekly report on how it's going. On the weekend I'll start my research on plastic free alternatives.
Have you ever bought pasta that looked significantly different to the picture? Me neither! So why does it need a plastic window?