Living Plastic-Free in Edinburgh: THE PERILS OF POOR PLANNING

A clearly knackered Farmer G trudges up a big hill during an enormous day-long hike - fuelled by the only plastic-free food he could find - two apples - and no fluids. Ending up, unsuprisingly, with a huge dehydration headache and mammoth hunger pangs. Thankfully, Sheona had the foresight to bring a metal water bottle and steal lots of leftover breakfast from the hostel, so at least she was OK. I suppose I could have bought some water and taken a fine, but self-fining is the moral equivalent of a 12th century knight pre-buying repentance for his impending war crimes - the poor can't afford to buy themselves environmental smugness!

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, 16 September 2012

THE PERILS OF POOR PLANNING

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