Plastics on holiday - #whereisthegreengrocer?
I started this when we were on holiday and appear to have been distracted so it's time to re-energise the blog! Here is my story from our holiday:
The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the kids are up at 5.30 am (why?).
We're still collecting plastic bottles and other general litter. A lovely 30 minute walk along the top of the cliffs led to a quick pick up of 14 pieces of litter ranging from plastic sunglasses arms to bottles and cans. We could easily have collected far more but little hands were already full.
One of my biggest challenges though is the plastic related to food shopping. I looked for a local greengrocer but couldn't find one. This has left us with the supermarket. Bananas, melons, oranges etc- all of those are available without plastic. But otherwise plastic is quite readily available in the supermarket:
I started looking into which supermarkets are doing the most and came across a number of sites citing calls on UK supermarkets to implement "plastic free aisles"
We live in Pakistan and are lucky in some ways that you can go to a greengrocer and just buy fruit and vegetables straight out of open boxes. However, we do struggle with the fact that the store owners do love to put everything in a plastic bag. We get all sorts of strange looks when we insist on putting it all in our reusable bags!
Whilst in the UK we investigated some of the innovations which are taking place - shampoo bars, toothpaste powder - there seems to be increasing awareness amongst groups of consumers in the UK (and other countries - Australia being one). One of my big questions is over the costs - to really bring about the scale of change needed, to my mind costs need to come down to make alternatives an attractive and easy option for those on all incomes.
The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the kids are up at 5.30 am (why?).
We're still collecting plastic bottles and other general litter. A lovely 30 minute walk along the top of the cliffs led to a quick pick up of 14 pieces of litter ranging from plastic sunglasses arms to bottles and cans. We could easily have collected far more but little hands were already full.
One of my biggest challenges though is the plastic related to food shopping. I looked for a local greengrocer but couldn't find one. This has left us with the supermarket. Bananas, melons, oranges etc- all of those are available without plastic. But otherwise plastic is quite readily available in the supermarket:
I started looking into which supermarkets are doing the most and came across a number of sites citing calls on UK supermarkets to implement "plastic free aisles"
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/04/14/plastic-addict-viral-video-campaign-calls-plastic-free-aisles/
- https://inews.co.uk/opinion/comment/oceanographers-call-plastic-free-supermarket-aisles-open-letter-i/
- https://www.change.org/p/all-ceos-of-the-uk-supermarkets-we-want-a-plastic-free-aisle-in-our-supermarkets
We live in Pakistan and are lucky in some ways that you can go to a greengrocer and just buy fruit and vegetables straight out of open boxes. However, we do struggle with the fact that the store owners do love to put everything in a plastic bag. We get all sorts of strange looks when we insist on putting it all in our reusable bags!
Whilst in the UK we investigated some of the innovations which are taking place - shampoo bars, toothpaste powder - there seems to be increasing awareness amongst groups of consumers in the UK (and other countries - Australia being one). One of my big questions is over the costs - to really bring about the scale of change needed, to my mind costs need to come down to make alternatives an attractive and easy option for those on all incomes.
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