Plastic to the left, plastic to the right, plastic, plastic everywhere in sight!!

“So mum when are you going to get over this phase of not wanting Plastic in the house?” “Is this like the time you wanted us to call you “maman” and not mum, or is it like the time you said you were giving up alcohol? Whatever it is please make it stop.

Authors 14 year old son

Oh ye, of little faith family of mine! Although I will be the first to admit this is @#%^$ hard. When I started this challenge I didn’t really take into account the impact that it would have on our little household yet alone the environment.

To give you a little report back on my progress, here are some changes and how they are working out!!

Dog Food:

We have changed Frida’s food from Dog Roll with plastic encasing and we are now ordering Frida’s Dog Food from Feed my Furbaby .

Frida is really loving her new delivery from Feed My Furbaby, Pistol not so much as the change has made her a little constipated and he had to assist Frida on the beach the other night. It was quite traumatic for them both!! The food comes nicely packaged in a cardboard box which appears “green” but unfortunately it has a plastic bag inside it. Obviously this is necessary to keep it fresh but wouldn’t it be great if we could lose the plastic somehow? The service however is great as they work out how much your dog needs to eat and they will automatically send you a new box to make sure you don’t run out.

Buying Delicatessan Product or going direct to the Butcher

When I buy meat now (for the boys) as the rest of the household is primarlily plant based. I don’t get it in the plastic with meat trays but I go to the meat counter and ask for the product to be wrapped in newsprint, or borrow the bags from the bread section. You get a few odd stares from the young staff and if you choose something marinaded then it can stick to the paper a bit. Problem here is expense as you can’t get the special deals in the meat fridges. Ideal situation would be for the boys to become more plant based, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Replacing little packets of chips and biscuits with homebaked biscuits and savoury school lunch items

Thankfully Sanchia and her baking skills have been put to action and the boys have been getting freshly baked biscuits, muffins and savoury scrolls to take in their little brown paper bags. Here they are not complaining. I have tried to buy the little snacks in the food bins, however, to be honest even though the snacks you find in the food bin seem more “green” than the chip packets, most of them only offer plastic ziplock bags to fill. In a local Bin Inn I asked for paper bags which they had behind the counter, so make a point of asking if you don’t want the plastic option. Again I had to face the embarrassment when I realised that I didn’t have my own personal reuasable shopping bags AGAIN!!! I would not be able to carry all my little brown bags so settled for a cardboard box.

Thank fully I can report that this fortnight our recycling bin was not overflowing and for the first time, I did not have to run around the neighbourhood distrbuting the extra waste from number 40!!! I am also not buying any plastic bottled drinks for the boys, much better for them in the long run.

I am determined to continue, despite the children thinking it is just a phase I am discovering some pretty amazing resources around Auckland to help people to become more sustainable, and reduce waste.

I made a little infographic to share with you. These aren’t all of them, just what I could fit on the page 🙂 If you are not in Auckland, maybe do some investigation yourself. I just google searched and found all of these.

Please let me know in the comments if you have any ideas/recipes/resources to help me in my quest to go plastic free, :).