Living Plastic-Free in Edinburgh: Greens!

Sunday 2 September 2012

Greens!

We're two days in - and surviving!

My favourite message so far is the following photo from Brenna - good job!! Taken in Morrisons, apparently she managed to get them to wrap her meat in paper... we'd tried this earlier and got a big NO for health and safety reasons (?), so I'm glad this is open to negotiation.

Although, what is that hiding under all the green? It looks strangely plastic like... :)

3 comments:

Unknown3 September 2012 at 17:28
Brenna, do their salad greens come plastic-free? How about arugula?
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Plastic-free Edinburgh3 September 2012 at 17:45
hey Laurie - the parchment veggie shops have plastic free salad leaves. not sure about rocket (arugula, to you yanks) - but i think i saw some once up there! I can check tomorrow for you.

Carrie
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Brenna6 September 2012 at 14:42
Fear not! The plastic under our worthy greens is just the re-useable IKEA bag we had in the van. Which was lucky seeing as we'd managed to leave our canvas bags at home.....

And I think the guy at the meat counter was far too amused with our request and explanation to even think of going health and safety commando on us. I actually don't eat red meat anymore these days, but may have to since Quorn is now off-limits!

Laurie, while Morrisons do have a good selection of plastic free veg, (not sure about the Arugula) we found ourselves buying a lot of stuff simply because it was plastic free, rather than specifically what we wanted, which isn't really the point, so will be spending quite a bit of time roaming neighbourhoods of the south side soon.

Hmmm, maybe Mercy Corps could take me back for the month so I'd have better access??? ;-)
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Some Facts and Figures

275,000 tonnes of plastic are used each year in the UK, that’s about 15 million bottles per day.
Most families throw away about 40kg of plastic per year, which could otherwise be recycled.
The use of plastic in Western Europe is growing about 4% each year.
Plastic can take up to 500 years to decompose
61% of the total plastic waste from Western Europe is packaging, which typically has a 'life' of less than 12 months
Packaging is typically 25-35% by weight of dustbin waste. About a third of household waste is kitchen and garden waste, and the other third is paper - so if you already compost your food waste and recycle paper, once you remove packaging there should be hardly anything left to go to landfill.

From http://www.recycling-guide.org.uk/facts.html and http://www.sepa.org.uk/about_us/greening_sepa/green_facts_and_figures/waste_facts.aspx

About Plastic Free Edinburgh

We are focused on trying to eliminate the use of single use, disposable plastics which go straight into the dustbin. Do we really need to buy fruit on a styrofoam tray, wrapped in plastic and then carried home in a plastic carrier bag?

We also believe we can just reduce our use of plastics - even if they are recyclable. There as so many types of plastic which are not recyclable... I'm sure a lot of what I put into recycling ends up in landfill.

So what if we cut out buying new plastic completely for a month, see what works for us, and then integrate that into our lives? Take the plastic challenge!

The Plastic Challenge!

The aim of the plastic challenge is to not buy ANY new plastic for a month (disposable, recyclable – all new plastic is forbidden – but you can use any durable plastic which you already have).

Each household taking part in the challenge can have three items which are “exceptions” to the rule – for items for which it really is too difficult to find alternatives during the month – but you can be challenged by other participants if they manage to find your item with no plastic available locally and for an affordable price. These exceptions should ideally be recyclable plastic – and not disposable plastic!

Share information on where you have managed to find things on the Plastic-Free World Blog, and if you feel so inclined, write some blog entries on your efforts to live plastic free.

Monitor your spending on food and basic goods for one week before the challenge begins, as well as during the challenge…so we can see if it is more or less expensive to try and avoid plastics.

Monitor the amount of waste you produce for one week before the challenge begins, as well as during the challenge…so we can see if we manage to cut down the amount of waste going to landfill.

That’s it! Simple…

You can start the challenge at any time. It's fun to do it as a group with some other people, so encourage your friends and family to join in as well. Email plasticfreeworld@gmail.com if you want to take part and we will send you some basic guidelines.

We hope that taking the plastic free challenge will lead us to explore Edinburgh and surroundings a bit more, investigate local shops and food markets that we wouldn’t normally go to (admit it – we all use the supermarket for most of our shopping!), try out some healthier alternatives to plastic wrapped everything – and generally have some fun trying something new.

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Sunday 2 September 2012

Greens!

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