Razors FYI

OK.  I don’t normally double post but this is really interesting.  I write about everyday plasticky issues on my Plastic Free Truro Facebook page (formerly ecotykki) and how to stop using them.  Today I had to look at razors, which was great because I have always wondered what I am meant to do when my razors run out.  And I discovered safety razors!  Proper old fashioned type razors with actual blades – for ladies!  I was so excited I had to share it here too.  Also found a fantastic lady who writes about all things anti-plastic:  Cellist Goes Green

My post:

Todays Infiltrator is… RAZORS! Ok, step one: do NOT use disposable razors but instead use the disposable cartridges as this at least minimises landfill space and waste… Like a venus ladyshaver. Men obviously can use leccy shavers! Ladies, we have the choice of plastic, plastic, plastic razors, epilating (expensive and time consuming), waxing (not environmentally friendly/recyclable) or being hirsute. (For what it is worth I LOVE anyone who refuses to shave: shaving is ridiculous and completely misogynistic. It means we ladies buy incredibly expensive razors (£8.49 for a classic venus refill razor from Superdrug (£8.25 for 4 refills); shower holders; expensive shaving creams; expensive after-shave moisturisers and all for NO reasonable reason…)  But, personally, I like to shave. And I know most of you do too, so we have to address this (admittedly daft and everso slightly first world) topic. 

So, what are we to do? It is clear that traditional products are all made of crappy plastic.  There is a service that sells razors made out of recycled plastic and then once you are done with it you can send them back for recycling.  We are all for a closed loop here so it looks good.  Well, the product advertises itself as recyclable but I can’t see where we are to send it back to and it costs £6 😦  It is here

Well, finally Cellist Goes Green suggests using a safety razor. WHAT THE… ?!!  These are old school razors made of stainless steel which last forever. Literally. They will not go moldy (like plastic lady shaver handles do!) and they look so classy. This first one is so cool and only £11.99. You only need to replace the blades which are metal (recyclable) and cost £7.99 for… 100! No, really. 100 blades. In comparison, 100 plastic ladyshaver replacements have cost you £159! And this calculation takes bulk buy discounts into consideration which, at your convenience, I bet you haven’t been using – preferring instead to buy as you go (£206). HOLY ****!! (So these people are using a CHEAPER, LESS ROBUST product and selling at us for 25 times the price! WOW!)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Natural-Sustai…/…/ref=sr_1_44_sspa…

This second one is more specifically for ladies (it is pinky) CHROME plated and well, just beautiful!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Parker-29L-Lave…/…/ref=sr_1_3_s_it…

It is twice the price at £23.99 but it really is lovely. This, 100 blades and free funky shaving soap cost me £30 on Amazon.  I am so very excited about this baby.  I love products and know that anyone who sees it in my bathroom would want one!  Not that anyone goes into my bathroom very often…

Now, it does seem to be a thing that we might want to ‘oil our blades’.  I have olive oil in my bathroom anyway for my homemade baby wipe solution so would just rub a little over the blade – gthis will stop it rusting apparently.  Though it this price I could use a new one every shave (what?!  You do that already?!  Ohhhhhh… *sits on mucky hands*) and feel like P Diddy for the price of it (reference: he wears new socks every day instead of washing them.  Tw*t.)  How marvellous!

But what do we do about our blades when we have finished with them?  Well, it is suggested that you put them in what is called a ‘blade bank’.  This sounds very exotic and exciting!  Actually there is only one on Amazon – it is £18 and clearly the same as a plain ol’ piggy bank.  So get yourself a nice wee coin jar (and shock the burglers when a fistful of rusty razor blades lands in their grabby maws) OR just use an old tin kept up high and pop your used blades in it when you’re done.  When it is full safely put it out for recycling with your tins or take to a metal recycling place and pop in with the stainless steel.  You could get excitable and post it off to a sharps place too.  Many options!  But not one we have to consider for a while 🙂

I shall post about how it goes when this lovely arrives!

 

Biodegradable? Sort of… Maybe… Compostable? Well, no. Welcome to Greenwashing.

It’s been a while – I apologise.  My family have been taken over by a virus of the most pernicious order.  The baby (well, toddler – I am in denial about her Growing Up) got infected and had to have antibiotics and I am feeling absurdly cheery considering the questionable state of my upper respiratory tract.

So, excuses out of the way, today I am keen to talk about greenwashing and in particular, the word ‘biodegradable’.  A wise old man introduced me to the term ‘greenwashing’ this week: Here dear reader, is the skinny on this discourse.  How I managed to miss this I do not know, but around 2009/2010 eco-brands were under fire for saying they were environmentally friendly/natural/plant-powered/eco products when, actually, they weren’t.  The complaints stood up and some brands changed the way they marketed their product so they, well, lied a little less.  More recently however, this issue has come to the fore again, and with the rise of anti-plastic movements and pro-eco buying habits it needs to be addressed.

A major issue is with claims that a product is ‘biodegradable’.  The Balance state that a biodegradable product should, ‘break down into natural materials in the environment without causing harm.’  When asked if their products are biodegradable Ecover say:

‘Yes. All the raw materials we use are biodegradable according to international standards’.

However, is has been found that Ecover products do leave traces of themselves in the natural environment and therefore are not, actually, completely biodegradable.  The key point in the debate is found in the phrase ‘according to international standards.’  Persil also claim to go above and beyond regulatory standards when it comes to their toxic non-bio products.  They justify using environmentally unfriendly chemicals in their washing detergents because you don’t need to wash the clothes twice!  This article in the Ecologist states that:

‘Big name brands, such as Unilever’s Persil, still use phosphonates. ‘Clearly with our laundry detergent it is important that the product washes effectively – otherwise the environmental impact is increased if clothes have to be rewashed – and that it works well at low temperatures,’ says Helen Fenwick, Unilever Sustainable Living Plan Manager. Fenwick says Unilever is committed to safety, as well as reducing the GHG impact from washing clothes. ‘Our formulation specialists use only internationally permitted ingredients and our long experience enables us to apply rigorous safety standards, which are sometimes higher than those set by the regulators,’ she says.’

Hmmmm.

If you look at the discourse it turns out that actually ‘biodegradable’ refers to the end state of a product (cleanly back to nature) and not the way it is broken down.  Biodegradable does NOT mean that it can be put in your compost.  Actually, it can mean that a product needs ‘extra biological help’ to break down sufficiently.  This can mean that we, as product users, may unwittingly be smearing product about our environments that will leave a lasting trace that is not environmentally friendly.  It also means, in the terms of a product like these wipes which claim loudly and proudly to be biodegradable, that consumers may be choosing to spend a bit more on a product that is eco – but where do I put it to biodegrade?  Not in the compost.  On their website they say that you can put their wipes, ‘in the bin or recycling’.  I am surprised they are encouraging the disposal of their eco-product into landfill and am curious as to what recycling these wipes are suitable for.  If the packaging is not recyclable, and the product itself is not compostable then…  what IS it?!  Method, however, do have wipes that are compostable (yay!).

So, what do they say?  Well, Ecover claim that:  ‘Our products are formulated for the lowest possible toxicity and the fastest biodegradability’.  Oh, fabulous!  Nooooo, wait.  It is so important to question what this means.  What is the benchmark for ‘lowest possible toxicity’ and ‘fastest biodegradability’?  Lowest possible according to what standards?  What is ‘fast’ for biodegradability?  Two days?  Years? Decades?  The assumption as a reader is to believe from these statements that they are doing their best.  They are setting industry standards.  No-one can have lower toxicity or faster biodegradability…

But that isn’t actually what they are saying, is it?  Or surely as eggs is eggs they would be saying exactly that.

In contrast, Method are more upfront about the level of success their products have, saying that their washing detergent is 98% biodegradable (www.methodproducts.co.uk).  For the consumer this may be enough but it still leaves one wanting.  We are also still faced with the unpalatable truth that these eco-products are coming to us in plastic.  Method are pleased that there bottles are 100% recycled and recyclable, but confess that we have to check local recycling facilities to see about the pump/spray nozzles.  Is this, then, an environmentally friendly product?  Interestingly, in California:

‘…it’s illegal to sell any plastic item, or any item with plastic packaging, that includes a label stating it’s “biodegradable,” “degradable,” “decomposable,” “compostable” or “marine degradable” (or any alternate form of those terms).’

I LOVE THIS!  They continue:

 ‘It’s also illegal in the state to sell a plastic product labeled “home compostable” (or some equivalent claim) unless the manufacturer holds a Vincotte OK Compost Home certificate. Vincotte is a Belgium-based inspection and certification organization.

Finally, the state bans the use of potentially misleading marketing terms, such as “environmentally friendly,” when they’re applied to plastic products and packaging.’

Wah!  Actual certification!  This State is informing consumers and preventing the possibility of greenwashing.  They don’t know they are being informed, it would just be normal to know the difference between biodegradable and compostable.  It would be normal to assume that a product in non-recyclable plastic packaging is not eco.  It is about basic standards and principles.  I want to be informed.  I want to know what degree of ‘biodegradable’ a product may be, I want to know if it is compostable.  Because in the UK I would put money on most people thinking that biodegradable is synonymous with compostable – and as we have seen, it really isn’t.  And green companies are relying on that assumption to market their product to us as being eco-friendly.

This, my friend, is greenwashing and it is very, very naughty.

 

 

Grocery Shopping #4

I write about grocery shopping the most, don’t I.  That and litter – picking!

Grocery shopping is becoming so political and frought.  I spent a really long time in Sainsburys yesterday looking at whether what I was about to buy was recyclable or not.  A lot of the ready-meal style sauce pouches are NOT (I don’t buy these anyway but wanted to see), including Jamie Oliver’s chickpea daal blardy bla healthy stuff (I do buy these… but not any more).

In fact (start rant here) I am getting really cheesed off with the amount of ‘healthy’ and ‘natural’ foodstuffs that are in plastic wrappers that are not recyclable and litter the streets.  The irony kills me.  Yay for nature!  Love the nature!  Love dates and goji berries, love chickpeas and lentils…  but, well, sod actual nature 🙂 🙂  I tweeted JO about his pouches but obviously got no response.  Feel free to do the same 😉  Nakd bars, Eat Natural bars – the wrappers are bloody everywhere, dropped by the well-to-do-in-a-rush.

So, pouches are nonsense but unfortunately, are also very fashionable.  Avocadoes yesterday where £1.10 singly or £1.40 in a pack of 3 in plastic 😦  ARG.  I wanted an avocado but could buy the single one at that price or the plastic multipack.  I have realised that, as cucumbers wrapped in plastic last 3 days longer than those without, in this instance maybe the plastic packaing makes the avocadoes last longer, therefore it will be cheaper than those that last less time because you can buy more of them with less wastage.  Although, saying that, if you sold the ones that are ripe and ready to eat cheaper then we would snap them up so…  Ok.  There is no excuse.  As per, I didn’t pack any of my fruit and veg in any plastic at all, just had it roaming around in my trolley.  The difference was that I didn’t feel bad or weird about it at all.  Next time I will get a small cardboard box from by the entrance and use that for my loose fruit and veg so it does roll around or spread onto my other shopping.  🙂  Jars of stuff and tins are good, I got lots of those.  I hunted for butter in recyclable packaging but no, it’s all in non-recyclable foil.  Why, I know not.  So I got margarine which can be recycled but isn’t as nice, or natural to eat.

I didn’t buy salad leaves in plastic packaging either, I bought some rocket seeds instead.  We shall see on that front though, green fingered I am not…  I am going to plant them in some UHT milk cartons!  Why not, eh.

Soooooo shopping was a pest.  Is funny though – because I have been doing my litter bladdy picking I have noticed how much litter is PURPLE.  Cadbury’s bladdy choccie bar foil everywhere.  And so it is making me feel cross when I see this purple packaging!  So I steered away from it yesterday.  It makes me mutter 😉  And Macdonalds stuff.  Just litters everywhere.

And, finally, speaking of my litter picking – Channel 4 news last night had an article about litter and the new litter picking brigades popping up.  Not surprisingly the council is keen to help provide these volunteers with their support and equipment.  TBH the council would be thanking their lucky stars – and their pennies.  In a society such as ours the council ought to be cleaning the streets not citizens.  It is a sign of a functioning and politically, socially and economically healthy society that the streets are clean of litter, debris, fly tipped nonsense and human effluent so diseases don’t spread via moulds, rats and riverways.  We pay council tax to ensure this doesn’t happen.  I do NOT look forward to eventually retiring to become a volunteer litter picker.

What can we do?

Well, I do welcome a change in attitude that sees litter as ‘our’ problem.  If you see it, pick it up.  I don’t want to get all hi-vis on everyone, or on a group of nice old people.  Just pick (sh)it up instead of walking past it.  Have the odd inland beach clean.  And write to your council to clean up!  Complain if the bin men are making more mess after they’ve been (ug, my village is gross after bin day, it just flies all over the road and is left by the, er, cleaners…  for the road sweepers?!)  At least the council could print a flyer or two asking people not to dump their rubbish on the floor.  Have an article in the local paper?  Add a couple of bins to new walkways?

It’s not rocket science.  We just need to start seeing it as our problem.  Remember, we are mucky humans.  We lived through an era where it was expected that people would clear up after us, but we can only drop so much before it starts to show.  My countryside is littered with shining, brightly coloured specks of micro-plastic.  We have to pick it up – just one bit each a day would change your world.

Be the change!

Inland Beach Clean?!

Today is a glorious day.  The sun is shining, it is cool, crisp and bright.  Today was a day for our inaugural beach clean!

Inspired by the folks at final straw cornwall I endeavour to do a beach clean every week throughout 2018.  There is one on Saturday being organised by WAX on Watergate Bay, we shall be going to that – illness and weather permitting 😉  FYI They do a beach clean monthly and you get a free cup of coffee if you collect a bag full of plastic rubbish.  Surfers Against Sewage help organise this one too, which is pleasing.

So, anyway, I decided to go to a nice beach nearby and mooch about with a bag collecting plastic and feeling rather wholesome protecting my beach while also being nourished by its very existence.  But as I walked home from school I saw bits of rubbish so decided to pick up the bits I saw as I went home.  And basically did that for nearly an hour.  In half a mile of lovely countryside I found enough random non-biodegradable litter to fill a big plastic bag!

Spot the crisp packet!

I have said before what a curious experience it is picking up skanky litter in public and it was horrible again today.  It is definitely an odd thing to do by yourself, I felt like the local crazy lady.  (I am really selling this to you aren’t I?!)  But the thing is, by acknowledging it and picking it up am I not the LEAST crazy person in the village?!  Surely it is just no good walking past it.  And I picked up a whole bag full without even looking for it.  But this is the thing isn’t it – we are used to seeing the ingrained rubbish.  To notice it is to feel responsible for it and if you feel responsible then you might have to pick it up.  And picking it up is horrible and weird.  When did we become so disconnected from our stuff?  Our stuff became separated into stuff we want and ‘rubbish’.  And then rubbish became something we put in a bin and let someone else take away.  It became something to be forgotten, someone else’s problem.  And then, somewhere along then way, this forgetting was enough for us to imagine that we are clean and sanitary, thoughtful and civilised.  But as human animals we are mucky!  We leave crap wherever we go and, depressingly, in many places we haven’t even yet set foot.  Being thoughtful is, apparently, leaving someone else to clean the muck we leave behind.  Being civilised is being able to think away our stuff as ‘rubbish’ and when it is taken away, not ours anymore.  As someone who picks up our muckiness I am, therefore, the opposite of thoughtful and civilised.  I am behaving like someone who is dirty and weird, uncivilised and irrational, ergo, crazy.

This perception of us as sanitary humans and of us as ‘civilised’ beings needs to be challenged.  We need to accept that as a species we are mucky.  We need to accept that this is always our problem and our responsibility.  Our rubbish is still our stuff – it’s not the birds’ stuff, or the whales’ stuff, or even my stuff and your stuff.  It’s like when I am telling my oldest boy to clean up the toys.  ‘I didn’t play with that!’ He will wail.  And I will say, ‘But they are all your toys and at other times your siblings will pick up after you too.’  We also need to normalise picking up the muck.  One day, hopefully, I will not be the crazy lady but be just like you 😉

So, despite the beauty of the day we never made it to the beach.  We cleaned our little bit of countryside and that was enough for one day.  However, this was a beach clean of sorts because I picked up the rubbish that otherwise would have been blown into the rivers and the seas to be washed up in a storm and picked up by beach cleaners.

What I really need though is a hoody from Surfers Against Sewage that says #PlasticFreeCoastlines on it for when I am doing my lonesome litter picking.  Then I won’t look so bonkers.  On the outside anyway 😉

Latte Levy

YES and HURRAY!  Britain are moving forward and MPs have proposed a tax on outlets using non-recyclable ‘disposable’ coffee cups which will amount to 25p per cup, per consumer.

I do not generally agree on taxes that are inevitably passed on to the consumer (me ;)) but this is a good one to start the conversation.  I think we need to feel that there is more benefit to not using their plasticky coffee cups; we need to understand why we should avoid these non-recyclable cups; and ultimately we need to feel some sense of responsibility, call to action, and empowerment.

This tax is a simple call to action that we can all be easily empowered to do: we take in our own coffee cups and have a reduced price coffee.  Huzzahs!

The major difference is the way that stuff I have been blathering about here and there and everywhere is tripping off everyone’s tongues now.  Everyone from the Daily Mail to the Mirror to the BBC has been chatting away about the plastic problem 🙂 About the fact that takeaway coffee cups are not recyclable and that no-one knows this, about plastic pollution is not someone else’s problem in someone else’s country, and the fact that it has to stop.  I was at a lovely little out-of-the-way B & B when the story broke and people were talking about it at breakfast, oohing and aahing over the fact coffee cups weren’t recyclable 🙂  It was lovely!  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of Cheffing, losing weight, River Cottage and sustainable fishing fame was chatting away very animatedly on the topic and has raised a LOT of awareness which is wonderful (thanks, Hugh *thumbs up*).

People have also been talking about the alternatives.  Channel 4 News had a  lovely article which highlighted these same problems but also looked at a coffee shop in London that had always used compostable coffee cups.  Theirs used a biodegradable starch inner lining instead of plastic.  However, their coffee cups were not actually compostable in the way we think of our veg waste – they did need to be broken down in a special way which was disappointing.  (I have actually emailed vegware to see if their compostable cups are like this too, or can be broken down along with kitchen waste.)  An interesting point followed though that apparently the typical coffee cup IS recyclable, it is just that in Britain there are only three plants that actually recycle in this way.  One of the owners of a plant was interviewed and said he would love to recycle more cups for us, but there was a problem with getting the cups from where they were discarded to his plant.  Because people think they are cardboard the cups often get put in with cardboard waste, which is obviously the wrong place, contaminates that recycling load and goes to landfill.  And councils do not pick up this type of recyclable because they have nowhere local to take it.  And businesses do not have special collection bins, or a system by which the used cups are taken to one of the three plants – that would be a big deal trucking rubbish all over the country, it just wouldn’t make good business sense at all.  Even I get that ;).

Instead, a couple of businesses like Starbucks have tried to organise an in-house recyclable program.  But this doesn’t really work, largely it seems because they don’t have a very high level of customers handing their cups back for recycling and it is hugely expensive.  And so all cups just end up in the normal waste bin and going to landfill.

So Channel 4 News concluded that, for now, the best thing you can do for the environment is take along your own cup.  And I agree.  Vegware write a wonderful critical report to the Latte Levy, stating that it should not be the consumer that bears the brunt of change.  Actually, they argue, industry actors want and need better recycling facilities and systems to encourage more ‘closed loop’* production and consumption.  I completely agree with this – we do need to keep the longer term goal in mind and not let this initiative be lip-service to make us all go away.  However, I do think that while the systems are still being worked on for the tech to actually work, changing our behaviours as consumers and the way we take disposable plastic for granted is the best way forward.  And making plastic pollution a national talking point is fantastic.  Because it’s not that hard to change, really, and by the time the systems do sort themselves out then we’ll probably (hopefully) be in a place socially where we think it is all a bit awful to be using plastic cups again – we’ll just stick with our own thanks.

🙂

*’Closed-loop production refers to the ability to make something, sell/consume it and then recycle it for reuse without any external actors or processes being involved.  Ideally this all takes place in one place.

🙂

Happy New Year, 2018!

Ug, for me 2017 was just awful.  This year must be better 🙂  Must be!

Generally the end of 2017 saw a fantastic rise in awareness amongst us normal folk regarding the extent of ocean pollution.  This was largely down to the Blue Planet II BBC TV series which highlighted, very gently but firmly, the fact that nowhere in the world was safe from plastic pollution.  Even the outermost shores of Antarctica, an utterly uninhabitable land, and islands and atolls never before explored by human feet were found to have plastic rubbish on them.  Albatrosses were feeding their chicks plastic; whales were found dead with bellies full of plastic bags; the intense depths of the ocean – only recently discovered by submarine scientists – had microplastics pollution floating down into the deep.

The situation is now known to be utterly, utterly dire.

But we can fix it!

I think the ethos that needs to change is one from ‘not my problem’, to collective responsibility.  We are way past the stage of pointing the finger and shouting ‘litterbug!’ and moving onto a new epoch where it really doesn’t matter how it got there, it just needs to be picked up.  By you.  Now.

Seeing someone else’s litter in the street and picking it up is a very humbling experience.  Walking around holding someone else’s skanky crap is of course disgusting and, I was surprised to note, actually quite embarrassing.  You don’t want anyone to think that it’s YOUR skanky crap because it is all muddy and gross – why would you have that?!  You don’t want to be seen pocketing the skanky crap either though, because that is really weird.  And on top of that I really don’t want to be labelled as the Litter Lady.  The one people hide from and talk about as being a ‘busybody’, ‘goody two shoes’ and ‘know it all’ and wait for me to fall on my face.  Into a pile of rubbish.  (As an aside: I think it is possibly a British cultural thing that we like to shame people who have a social conscience or who are too obviously ‘good’ or clever.  We only trust those unquestioning souls in the herd; outliers are to be ridiculed, ostracised and broken.  See also, Colonialism; Brexit; British Class System.)

BUT, at the heart of it all is the message that we ALL need to pick up the rubbish before it gets into the rivers and the oceans.  It needs to become normal to do this, until we reach a point where we, as a society, stop relying on other, invisible forces to clean up our rubbish so much.  I think the concern is that I will just pick up litter in my environs by myself forever.  Constantly cleaning after other people while tutting away to myself.  But then I think, well, we will all be doing this in the future and someone has to lead the way.  We have to make it NORMAL to care about rubbish on the floor, we have to make it NORMAL that, rather than assuming it goes somewhere safe and thoughtful, we think ‘Oh bugger, that’ll end up in some poor blighter’s belly soon enough, I’d better pick it up.’  We have to make it NORMAL that if someone is putting someone else rubbish in the bin we think ‘Aw, good for you,’ and not, ‘Bleugh, you are a skank picking up other people’s crap.’

And so I see 2018 in with a hopeful heart.  I see 2018 as a year in which plastic litter becomes all of our problem; where we all #SeeThePlastic; and learn how to make new, more thoughtful decisions as consumers, citizens and educators.

Courage!

 

 

Email to Sainsburys

So I sent my first badgering email 🙂  I brought up:

• Unnecessary packaging on the multipacks
• Plastic bags for loose fruit and veg
• Plastic on netting

I didn’t get space in the form to talk about the eco-aisle!  But they responded and, while not really committing to anything new they do show willing.  I’ll take that for now :).  Here is a copy of their response:

Dear Dr Srivastava

Thanks for writing to us about your concerns surrounding our environmental policies. We’re really passionate in our approach to this issue, particularly as one of our key corporate values is respect for our environment.

As part of our company values, we’re committed to sourcing the products we sell in a sustainable and responsible way. Our scale means we can make a massive difference by embedding ‘Respect For Our Environment’ in our decision making. We aim to be the UK’s greenest grocer, not only by reducing our impact on the environment but by engaging our suppliers and others to do the same. You can find out more about this by visiting http://www.j-sainsbury.co.uk/responsibility, including our sustainability plan, our comments and stories on food donation, healthier baskets and waste less, save more.

I’m sorry you’ve had to query our approach, and I’ve dropped a copy of your email to our Corporate Affairs Team. They’ll be able to use your comments to help them with their continual updates on our environmental policies.

Thanks for taking the time to get in touch and I hope you’ll feel happy to shop with us soon.

Kind regards,

Aaron Podesta | Sainsbury’s Careline
Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd | 33 Holborn, London | EC1N 2HT
customer.service@sainsburys.co.uk | 0800 636 262
twitter.com/sainsburys | facebook.com/sainsburys

As you can see above,  if you would like to email them with your concerns too their address is:

customer.service@sainsburys.co.uk

This is a template for an email you can send, if it helps:

Dear         ,

I am sure that you are increasingly aware of the international concern with plastic pollution and that consequently people do not want to purchase unnecessary plastic with their groceries.  I wish to draw your attention to the superfluity of single use plastic in your stores so you can hopefully change your policies to be more protective of our environment.

First, in your stores consumers are incentivised to buy products in unnecessary plastic packaging in the form of multi-pack buys.  Products from fruit and veg to tins of beans, soups and fish purchased in plastic multi-packs are consistently cheaper than when bought loose.  This is both unnecessary and harmful plastic waste and financially demotivating for consumers trying to make ethical purchasing decisions.

Second, the netting for food like oranges has unnecessary plastic tags on it, while loose fruit and veg has non-degradable stickers on.  These could be made from biodegradable materials.

Third, your consumers are encouraged to put these items in flimsy single use plastic bags when you could easily change this to compostable netting; desirable, non-plastic market bags; or paper bags.

Finally, it is essential that online shopping is delivered in a more customer-friendly manner.  It is currently challenging to receive a large family shop without using plastic bags to help speed the unpacking from the lorry.  I would suggest lining the stackable plastic crates with a cardboard box taken out of the crate by the door for easy unpacking.  These can later be returned to you or recycled.

These issues can arguably be addressed immediately and result in a positive, ethical move for your brand.

Thank you for your time.

Yours sincerely

…..

I also like to add the following because I like these ideas 🙂

There are longer term issues that can be changed.  Elsewhere in the store the issue continues as breads and cereals are swathed in plastic – even fresh bakery items are sold in paper bags with plastic windows.  Refill bins for popular brands could be introduced.

I would also like to suggest the development of an eco-aisle of ecologically sound, compostable or biodegradable alternatives to common household products.  (This is distinct to products that promote themselves as ‘organic’, ‘natural’ or ‘local’ while using non-recyclable plastic packaging.)  Rather, they are products which are easily recyclable, reusable or refillable.  Your store already has plenty of these products but they are hard to see among the regular brands.  An ‘eco-week’ could be arranged, promoting your support to ecologically aware brands.  You could trial and demonstrate the efficacy of bottle refills for household cleaners; install bulk buy refill bins for cereals; deposit and return systems for plastic bottles and even trial and promote alternative products like shampoo bars, simple hand soaps, reusable products over disposable ones (e.g. kitchen cloths, baby wipes and nappies) and windowsill salad gardens.  It would be possible to market these as aspirational and desirable lifestyle changes, as fun and simple ways of ‘being’ along with the current trend toward the concepts of hygge and mindfulness.

I sincerely believe that immediately addressing some of the above concerns while also developing a longer-term, ecologically motivated anti-plastic campaign could only be a positive move for your brand.  I hope that you agree.

I hope they do agree!  Anyway, there isn’t going to be much choice soon, the Government seem to be on the case – more of which later 🙂 🙂 🙂

Am off to wrap my pressies – using recyclable wrapping paper (not the shiny plasticky stuff!) and either pretty yarns, string and twine to wrap around it in a bow 🙂  I then reuse lovely cards from last year’s crop as gift tags.  It is surprisingly effective and very pleasing!

Big loves y’all

Ni

 

 

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Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd (3261722 England)
Registered Offices: 33 Holborn, London, EC1N 2HT

Sainsbury’s Argos is a trading name of both:
1) Argos Limited, Registered office: 489-499 Avebury Boulevard, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, MK9 2NW, registered number: 01081551 (England and Wales); and
2) Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Limited, Registered office: 33 Holborn, London, EC1N 2HT, registered number: 03261722 (England and Wales).

All companies listed above are subsidiaries of J Sainsbury plc (185647).

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Our Duty of Care

There is a beach clean at Perranporth Beach in Cornwall on the 29th December.  We shall be going.  By ‘we’ I mean me, my Husband and my three children.  I know beach cleans are not new, but I still want to rave about what a fantastic initiative they are.  It both draws attention to the scale of the problem and normalises the fact that we have to clean up after ourselves – both to adults and their children.

One thing I find most fascinating is how more aware, more passionate and concerned school children are about plastic pollution.  My son is 8 and very educated about the causes and effects of plastic in our oceans, simply from reading (a BIG shout out to whizzpopbang science mag for kids, here), watching telly and school.  His classmate did a presentation on the effect of plastic on marine animals last week and another of his classmates wrote to the Headteacher asking if the school could coordinate a beach clean.  (Incidentally her Dad asked me if I could find out about how to do a beach clean and I said, as Community Leader with SAS I will organise one!  Am excited – I have wanted to do one for ages.  His daughter can be the Student Liason Officer 🙂  This will probably be closer to Springtime so WATCH THIS SPACE!)  The kids KNOW what the problems are.  What we also need to do is to provide solutions and the opportunity to enact them, thereby normalising environmentally protective behaviours.

We have a duty of care to future generations to show them and teach them how to be better than we are.  Our parents generation discovered plastic and we took it to a whole new level with convenience living.  We now need to undo these habits and find new, sustainable, kind ones and pass them on to our children.  I am not saying everyone needs to start making their own clothes and living off the land.  I am sensible enough to know that we will not be able to completely change how we live.  But we can, as citizens and planetary animals, be open to the idea that how we do things needs to be challenged.  We cannot afford to be thoughtless and trusting of the Man who sells our packet sandwiches in non-recyclable plastic.  Instead we need to say ‘Hang on!  There are compostable, plant-derived alternatives you know?’.  We need to say:

Stop grouping fruit and veg in plastic bags for us.

Stop offering us plastic bags for groceries.

Stop wrapping multi-buys in unnecessary swathes of plastic.

Stop putting plastic stickers on fresh food.

Ask your MP:

For recycling and composting initiatives to save on landfill rubbish.

To educate people on the importance of recycling.

To raise the idea of a Plastic Tax for companies who rely unnecessarily on single use plastic.

To highlight the alternatives to single use plastics.

 

We need to make the use of single use plastics anti-social, like we did smoking and dog poo.  We need to show our children by example, how to prevent the mistakes we made.

 

And that can be our legacy.

Courage!

www.vegware.com

I have found a viable alternative to catering supplies that usually rely on plastic nonsense!  I have, I have!  They are called vegware and are AWESOME.  I am going to see if I can get our wonderful PTA at school to use them.  They sell 25 double skinned COMPOSTABLE coffee cups for £5…  this is competitive and significant 🙂  They also sell LIDS for coffee cups!  And cutlery and plates and just loads of fabulous stuff.  They can even print your logo on your cups.

Fantastic!

 

Lush Invented Shampoo Bars

I didn’t know this!

This is a great article on the value of a shampoo bar vs a bottle and Lush’s approach to ‘naked’ packaging:

https://uk.lush.com/article/naked-revolution

Basically the article says:

• Shampoo bars don’t need synthetic preservatives because they are naturally preserving – lasting for ever and ages
• Each shampoo bar lasts on average 3 times as long as a 200ml bottle – so each bar you have saves 3 bottles from landfill
• Shampoo bars can travel easily – they are light and can be put in a tin

 

Not everyone likes Lush – I know sometimes the smells can be too intense.  I do like them though and am excited by their ‘naked’ approach 🙂