We rarely stop to realise how many times a day we come into contact with single-use plastic – from our morning showers (yes, those organic shampoos still come cased in plastic), to our lunchtimes (for my sins, sometimes my sandwiches are wrapped in clingfilm), to evening cocktails (sipping mojitos through straws). I wanted to spend a week cutting out plastic, by avoiding anything single-use, to see how tough it really is.
Come Saturday, my cupboards are always empty, so it made sense to begin my plastic-free week today, since I knew I’d have to tailor my shopping to accommodate my new plastic-free lifestyle. Typically, I look forward to my grocery shop and I’ll happily spend up to an hour and a half milling about my supermarket of choice. Today, I hit the shops with a sense of trepidation – and it turned out that I was right to feel some dread.
I wanted to see whether I could get the bulk of my shopping from one supermarket, so I headed to Waitrose. I had already planned to buy loose fruit and vegetables, instead of pre-packaged, in an attempt to avoid plastic. Sadly, in my local, I couldn’t even find loose onions or tomatoes, and left with only a carton of almond milk – my first slip up since cardboard tetrapaks incorporate plastic, but at least it could be recycled (one of my colleagues collects our tetrapaks and takes them to Sainsbury’s, who recycle them).
Tesco was my next stop, where I was much more successful, picking up produce including loose onions, tomatoes, apples, and mangoes. However, I had to abandon the majority of my list, like asparagus and strawberries, as well as vegan sausages and tofu. I thought I’d made a clever swap by buying a cardboard packet of organic cinnamon, only to be disappointed when I later opened it to find that inside the box, the spice was held in a sneaky plastic pocket.