Scrapping the single use plastic packaging

Can it be done? What will life be like without single-use plastic?

I thought I was going to lose junior daughter and Mr Pitt on day one. New Year's Day in the Pitt household is traditionally a day for chilling out and eating snacks.  Junior Daughter had friends staying for New Year and so when she took them home Mr Pitt instructed her to buy snacks. Please remember the plastic free bit, I urged and received back a 'don't worry, Mum'.
Soon I get a phone call asking what she could buy. Maybe tubs of nuts, was my suggestion. But she couldn't see anything in a reusable tub. Then I cracked and said that I couldn't think of anything and I wasn't going to be eating them anyway. (Not true!)
A few minutes later I get a text:

"There is 100 per cent nothing I can buy."

I wasn't sure what to expect. But she did indeed come back with nothing. I raided the snacks cupboard and pulled out a few unfinished packs of crisps and found a tub of Yorkshire Crisps from a hamper I had been given for Christmas. I thought it was bound to have a plastic inner. But No. The tub is on its third use now full of roasted peanuts from Whole Foods Market. It has already transported sugar from SESI Oxford to the fairly heavy glass storage jar I use. Mr Pitt also came to the rescue with a yummy tortilla - a Spanish tapas dish he made from fried potatoes, onion, marjoram and thyme, fried up then transferred to a quiche dish, covered with beaten egg and then grilled.  So we had a lovely film and snacks evening after all.

The snack attack issue was solved on my trip to SESI Oxford. When I stocked up with dry goods like flour and sugar, I bought peanuts and raisins in my own Onya Weigh bags. JD is taking these to school daily in a Philadelphia cheese tub. Then in Whole Foods Market I filled my Yorkshire Crisps tub with salted peanuts and bought dried salted broad beans, giant salted corn and Taiwanese Chilli Rice Crackers in my own containers. Today we will make a batch of mini cheese biscuits and some banana bread.

So far we have still been producing plastic from using up stocks, but we've managed to do all our shopping totally naked. So, off to a good start.

Using up the stocks.  This is the plastic we have generated in a week.

Shopping Naked

It has been maybe ten years now that the Pitt family have only needed to put their 'general waste' bin out for collection once or twice in a year and even then it hasn't had much in it.  This was the photo of our entire residual waste for 2013.

Residual Waste for 2013

Now, it helps, of course, living in West Oxfordshire, where there really isn't very much at all that can't be recycled in your kerbside collection boxes - and they even take flyaway plastics as long as they are bagged up so they don't fly away during the collection process.  I've also actively taken steps to think about my residual waste each year and have tried to avoid buying things that can't be reused, recycled, composted or burnt on my stove - or things that have packaging that can't be recycled, reused etc.  And I've done that for a while now, so zero waste has become a habit.

But, this morning I put out four black boxes each of which was fairly full of recyclables. I'm pretty sure I put out four boxes, if not five, the week before and similar the week before that.  That's a lot of packaging for one family.  I have taken in the recycling from the cricket club annual dinner and we also had a rather large 18th birthday party, but it really has none-the-less got my attention. So I decided that over the next few weeks I'm going to really try hard to reduce the amount of packaging I amass.

We have for a long time bought much of our fruit and vegetables loose and last year I converted a patch of garden to grow salad herbs in order to provide unpackaged salad leaves.  My local butcher will accept my various reusable plastic boxes for when I buy meat.  I've been experimenting with making homemade snacks, particularly to reduce food waste as well as to reduce packaging.  But there are still so many things that come in a plastic bag.

I came across this write-up of Whole Foods Markets supermarket chain on the plasticisrubbish.com blog and it dawned on me that on one of my now very occasional journeys that I still make by car I drive right past the one in Cheltenham.  So today, I went prepared with a reusable shopping bag and my tiny bag of 'Onya Weigh Bags' - which are reusable, washable very lightweight mesh bags and checked out the Cheltenham branch of Whole Foods Market.

The selection of fruit and veg looked very inviting, but I had come to investigate those cupboard store ingredients like dried fruit, cereals, rice and pasta that are rarely found sold loose.

I came away with the following haul:

1. UK sourced jumbo oats at £1.09/kg.  The last box of oats I bought - because it was the only one I could see that was UK sourced with entirely recyclable packaging - is currently £2.70/kg in Sainsbury's.

2. Organic arborio rice £2.99/kg.  The last box I bought was priced at £2.20/kg from Sainsbury's.

3. Brown basmati rice at £2.39/kg.  Sainsbury's brown basmati rice is £1.80/kg

4. Organic raisins £5.99/kg. Sainsbury's organic raisins are £5.00/kg but the raisins I usually buy there are £3.00/kg.

5. Dry roasted peanuts £5.39/kg.  The cheapest dry roasted peanuts in Sainsbury's are £4.40/kg but I wouldn't buy them as the packaging isn't recyclable even in West Oxfordshire.  The ones I'd likely buy were £6.70/kg.

Price wise, it seems you win some you loose some.  If I'd bought around a kilo of each item then given the 30p discount Whole Foods Market gave me for using my own bags then I paid £1.15 more than I'd have paid buying what I'd normally buy at Sainsbury's or 85p less if I'd have chosen organic raisins.  I did a taste test on the raisins I had left at home and the ones I'd just bought and the latter were definitely tastier.  I doubt that's just down to freshness as raisins don't last long in our house.

So price-wise I felt it was ok and quality wise and packaging wise I'd give it top marks.  I love the fact that I would soon know exactly how much I can buy to fill my storage containers for each item and I loved the fact that I was left with no packaging to recycle.  I also cheekily took the opportunity to check out my Onya bags on the scales compared to the paper bags the shop provides and my Onya bags weighed a tiny bit less.  I will be shopping there again next time I pass.

I was only disappointed that there was no bulk buy plastic free pasta.  So it looks like I will have to try and make my own :)