Life without plastic: pioneer families show how it’s done
Carrier bags are easy to replace and milk can come in glass
bottles. But what about deodorant, toothbrushes and clingfilm?
Nosheen Iqbal
@nosheeniqbal
Sat 29 Dec 2018 16.42 GMT Last modified on Sat 29 Dec 2018
17.25 GMT
Bettina and Mark Maidment with Dominic, six, and Dexter,
three. Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Observer
Bettina Maidment hasn’t emptied the kitchen bin since the
beginning of November. The time before that was in August. “You can reduce your
rubbish a lot,” she insists, pointing to her recycling and food compost bins.
“I have two kids and they’re pretty anti-plastic – I am their mother after all
– but it is do-able.”
Maidment, 38, is the founder of Plastic Free Hackney, a
campaign to rid the east London borough of single-use plastic and has been
serious about committing her family to plastic-free, zero-waste living for two
years now. First to go was milk cartons. “That was an easy switch, we got a
milkman.”
Then came bamboo toothbrushes, swapping out supermarket
shopping for the local greengrocer, and making deodorant, cleanser, moisturiser
and handsoap at home. She opens her fridge to reveal shelves of glass jars and
reusable containers; her larder is stocked with lentils, pasta, porridge and
the like, bought in bulk and stored in glass or canvas bags.
“At the moment, there are all these headlines about sales in
shops being down, but maybe everyone has enough stuff.”
Her aim, she says, is to instil the principle in her sons,
who are three and six, “that they can be happy with as little as possible”.
She is not alone. As public anger grows over the
environmental impact of single-use plastic, trying to live plastic-free and
more sustainably has become a mainstream concept. “There was a huge uptick in
the conversation after Blue Planet about how to reduce plastic use and it
remains, by quite a margin, the single biggest topic area people call us for,”
says Julian Kirby, lead campaigner on plastics at Friends of the Earth. “In my
experience, the amount of public concern for this environmental issue is
unprecedented,” he says. “It’s been phenomenal.”
Maidment admits that her gradual awareness of the amount of
plastic and litter in the street has become an obsession. Now, everything that
can be is reused, recycled, bought on eBay or sourced from a charity shop. The
family have had their second “buy nothing new” Christmas. Maidment’s husband
works as an engineer in sustainable design but she didn’t tell him about her
project at the beginning.
“My interest was piqued online and I saw how other people
were doing it and slowly started reducing my waste.” She opened an Instagram
account to document the process of going plastic-free. “It was very much a
secret at first – I thought people would think I was mad – but I couldn’t
reconcile the idea that so much of what we buy is designed to be thrown away.
It’s insanity.”
For Kiran Harrison, 43, who works as a massage therapist and
storyteller in Worthing, West Sussex.the impetus to go plastic-free came around
the time her son, now nine months, was born. She visited her local cloth nappy
library, where parents can loan reusable nappies, and gradually began swapping
out the plastics in her home. “Nappies are the number one offender,” she says.
“And cloth nappies are so much easier than people realise.”
Harrison says she has “always lived consciously” but began
thinking about the environment more after becoming fed up by the waste of
supermarket food packaging. “For me, it’s about moving towards an existence
that is as kind to the environment as possible,” she says. “I am concerned
about the world my son and granddaughter are growing up in, it’s important to
me that I am an example of how to live.”
Like Maidment, Harrison makes her own moisturiser.
Toothpaste and deodorant come from a jar but she can’t face giving up her
shampoo just yet. “I’m Asian and have thick hair – I really love my hair!” She
laughs. “But it’s not about feeling bad about what you’re not doing, it’s about
feeling good about what you do do.” Support from a fast-growing zero-waste
community in Sussex has also helped; a plastic-free, zero-waste food store has
recently arrived in Worthing.
“Some people are cynical about how you can sustain a
lifestyle like this,” she admits, “or cynical about making a small contribution
when big companies produce so much waste, but I’m not down with the ‘what’s the
point of doing anything, we’re all doomed’ brigade – it’s far too apathetic for
my liking.”
Harrison’s top tip is to “do things gradually so they become
a habit. Trying to do everything at once is overwhelming.”
Friends of the Earth, which established a UK network in
1970, launched its #plasticfreefriday campaign in February. “There have been
millions of page impressions on that hashtag on Twitter and Instagram,” says
Kirby. More than 11,000 people have pledged to join the campaign on Friends of
the Earth’s website.
Last week the government launched a consultation to double
the charge on plastic bags to 10p while Damian Hinds, the education secretary,
called on schools to go plastic-free by 2022. According to a UN report
published in June, the proportion of plastic waste that has never been recycled
stands at 90.5% – a figure so alarming that it was declared the winning
international statistic of 2018 by the Royal Statistical Society.
Waleed Akhtar, an actor from London, says: “The idea that
the 150 or whatever toothbrushes I’ve used in my life will still be on this
earth 400 years after I’ve gone is horrible to me.” In his profession, he says
it takes “a high level of organisation going out on tour that you don’t always
have, but when you start with plastic, you start thinking more about our
disposable culture in general and become more mindful”.
Akhtar uses beeswax wraps rather than clingfilm for his
sandwiches and carries a reusable water bottle, bamboo cutlery, Tupperware and
a reusable bag everywhere he goes. “We need to get away from the idea that
going plastic-free is sort of seen as a bougie, white, middle-class
aspiration,” he says. “I used to drink bottled water every day, but I did a
play called Fracked!, and a monologue in it about the impact of water bottles
on the environment kicked it all off for me.”
Applying a plastic-free philosophy can, he admits, be
challenging in shared accommodation. “I’ve recently moved back home, and
getting my mum fully on board is a process. She gets it, and she comes from a
culture that isn’t wasteful, but there are so many small decisions to make
every day about reducing your damage to the planet.”
THE STEPS YOU CAN TAKE…
Use a reusable water bottle
Plastic bottles remain the second most common single-use
plastic polluting the planet – after cigarette butts.
Carry a reusable cup
Most coffee chains offer a discount to customers bringing in
their own cups because 99.75% of takeaway coffee cups are not recycled in the
UK.
Switch to solid soaps
Liquid shower gels and handwash can be one of the biggest
sources of household plastic waste.
Say no to disposable cutlery
The EU plans to ban single-use cutlery, plates, straws,
cotton buds, drink stirrers and balloon sticks by 2021.
Brush with bamboo
From hair-brushes to toothbrushes, switch to biodegradable
options.
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