Plastic Free July is much harder than I thought it would be. 

We have become a civilisation so accustomed to the “throw-away culture” that we rarely take a hard look at our buying, using and waste habits. 

In my first week I realised just how much food comes wrapped in plastic. 

A walk around a supermarket is actually a tour of a plastic museum. It’s like companies have a game of “how many things can we package in plastic”! 

As a part-time vegetarian realised just how much food comes packaged in plastics for vegetarians. 

For the record, I only eat meat on special occasions (out at dinner, or at a dinner party, or if the meat is hunted etc). 

Long story short, I lived with Canadian Inuit in the high Arctic for a period in 2013/14, and with an almost entirely meat diet dependent on hunting, and began to realise personal circumstances and relationships with food and in particular, meat. 

For me personally, eating meat every single day devalues it. Something had to die and to treat it as a cheap thing just didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t expel the time and energy hunting it, and I didn’t raise the animal, nor did I have to end its life - so I don’t feel worthy of eating it. 

The Inuit treat animals above all else. Their physical and cultural survival depends on them. When they killed an animal, they would often pray over and thank the animal profusely. 

The hunter would then give the meat to elders, then to young families, and always take his share last (they would also use the entire animal - a complete opposite to what the modern, western world does. 

That experience made me make some changes in how I live my life - stopped eating meat and began using less plastic, and less “stuff” in general. I became more thoughtful about my impact on the world and those around me. 

So back on the topic - not eating meat means I don’t have to buy meat in plastic or that plastic tray stuff it is usually wrapped in. 

I also don’t have to deal with keeping it cold or frozen. 

It’s awful though, because if you are a vegetarian (or vegan) who made the choice due to environmental or social considerations, it is hard to stay true to that aim when your tofu is basically wrapped in industrial food-grade plastic. 

True story: My SMEG knife (remember the ‘Great 2020 SMEG War’ at New World?!) barely made a dent in the plastic, where other packages would give in at just a glance at the trusty metal utensil. 

In a week, I made a pile of plastic trash by the end of the first week of Plastic Free July - sadly, I forgot to take a photo before putting it in the bin and soiling it all. 

For the purpose of this first week, I made no changes to my buying habits so I could take stock of what I would normally make. 

For reference, I think I am pretty good at minimising my waste. 

But I had a fairly impressive/depressive haul of trash: 

• 2 x tofu packets (seemingly made of nuclear war resistant plastic)
• 1 x large chocolate bar wrapper 
• 2 x packets of coffee beans 
• 2 x 2L milk jugs 
• 1 x 1L greek yoghurt tub 
• 1 x bag from loaf of bread 
• 1 x bag of 1kg carrots (WHY PUT CARROTS IN A PLASTIC BAG?!) 
• 1 x 1kg bag of rice
• 1 x bag of burrito wraps 
• 1 x plastic bag of coriander 
• 1 x bag of dried pasta
• 1 x tub of butter 
• 1 x plastic from cucumber (forgot to buy non-plastic-wrapped cucumber) 

The rest of my shopping is mostly fresh ingredients, such as vegetables and fruit, or staples such as flour in paper bags etc. 

The one good thing I made a change in early was to use a wooden toothbrush. 

Did you know, every single toothbrush you have ever used, will outlive you by thousands, potentially millions of years. 

That’s horrific. If everyone on Earth used hundreds of toothbrushes in their lifetime then that equates to hundreds of billions of toothbrushes. 

The one thing which did strike me about my purchasing was how much of my purchases are in glass, which takes quite a lot of carbon to create (mine, manufacture/produce, ship, create into product (ie. jar of relish), ship to store, purchase by someone like me, use, recycle, transport to recycling centre, mostly likely crushed, then sent overseas to be recycled and it does most of that journey over again - that’s a lot of carbon used in transportation alone, just for a jar). 

This coming week, I have found a local wholefoods store where I can drop off my jars and bags, and they refill for me, then deliver to my door. 

I’ll be giving that a try, and I’ll remember to take photos.