So today is the first day I’m starting this journey to reducing plastic I use on daily bases, finding ways to replace it and hopefully start to reduce overall waste.

Few of the key things that I identified uses a lot of single use plastic that I buy and use on daily bases are as follows:

• salads and some vegetables like cucumbers
• yogurts and milk
• treats and snacks
• cleaning products

• beauty products

I’m quiet lucky in a way that a lot of the food that I buy while being on plant based vegan diet does not include plastic if I try to work my way around it. Ready made soy meat alternatives, especially ones from the freezer sections are already in paper packaging, so if I want to treat myself to a burger I can do it without buying a single use plastic.

When it comes to dry and long life products such as porridge, beans, lentils, pulses, nuts, seeds etc there are already many alternatives to plastic packaging such as cans, glass jars or going to zero waste shops which grow in popularity here in the UK.

With more and more of these opening, there should always be one close by. The only things is some of them might not be as cheap as buying in bulk from normal supermarkets so it really depends what you want to achieve and food budget you are happy with while reducing plastic waste in your household. I will add a link to a list of these shops on the bottom of this post.

In the end I’m sure there will be moments where I end up buying something that might have some sort of single plastic in it such as stickers on fruit and veg. Anything that I will not reuse I will put away and store to see how much single use plastic I have actually ended up buying in a month time.

I will do my best to make each post this month targeting either shopping alternatives I find and I will try to categorise them, separating food from cleaning and beauty products.

The below picture is today’s shopping done at a local farm shop and Aldi. I must say currently I’m struggling to find lettuce without packaging so I have decided to use cabbage in my salads for now.

This challenge is something that was introduced to me by my management at Charles Bentley & Son. We as a company produce a lot of wooden and FSC natural products so we are trying to be more environmentally friendly and aware of our plastic waste.

Zero Waste Shop list: https://pebblemag.com/magazine/doing/plastic-free-shopping-13-of-the-uks-best-zero-waste-stores