Well, here we are on the final day of Plastic Free July. 

It has been a tough month, personally, with plastic seemingly finding its way into my life in the smallest and most surprising of ways. 

The months started with me not changing my habits out of the need to gauge how much plastic I used. 

That first week I had my kitchen recycling bin full. 

A week later, it barely had anything in it. 

This week, it only has a few items. Amazingly they are things I should have done without but the momentary lapse allowed them to creep through. 

A plastic bag for spinach and a tub of butter. Both easily avoidable if swapped for paper wrapped and bagged. 

The month has taught me a lot about buying habits and really engrained the lessons of trying to be conscious and not falling into the trap of convenience. 

That convenience our society is largely based on is horrific. Our grandparents and great grandparents would be shocked at the waste we produce instead of using paper or going without entirely. 

Easy things to change, for example, are buying loose vegetables and fruits - not putting them in a plastic bag. 

Bring a reusable bag, or if you are just getting a couple, just leave them loose if you don’t have a bag. 

The cashier and bagger won’t care if you genuinely ask how they are and make an effort to be a decent, friendly human. 

The other big change I made was to a wooden toothbrush and honestly, I don’t know why everyone uses plastic toothbrushes. 

Wood is good, they say. It’s the best damn material on Earth and New Zealand probably has more of a wood industry than it does a plastic industry. 

I choose to tell myself that when I buy a wooden toothbrush, I’m keeping a local forestry worker in a job. 

Whatever helps me sleep at night, eh?

The last lesson I learned this month was to make my own solutions instead of buying them. 

Need something cleaned? Usually boiling hot water does the trick. 

Swear to the gods, 9/10 times it works. 

If it doesn’t Google it. Trust me. Someone has a solution which does not require buying some plastic pump-action bottle from New World. 

Next trick I’m going to learn is how to make my own citrus enzyme cleaner from orange and lemon peels, yeast, and sugar. Voila! 

To end this month, all I really want to say is give it a go. We have so much rubbish in the world it really isn’t necessary to create more. 

Anything you buy is entirely within your control. I honestly hope there is a day when people look at plastic and feel disgusted. That’s how I have become. 

Make the change not just for the world, but your own wallet too. I’ve seriously saved money finding my own solutions to things and not falling in that convenience trap. 

Convenience, I say, always comes at a cost. 

It isn’t about who is better and being plastic free - it is all about each of us making small changes wherever we can. 

The first and easiest thing - buy a wooden toothbrush.