Can you change some bad plastic habits in just one month? Plastic Free July is the perfect time to try! Whether it’s ditching pre-packed food or avoiding lining bins with plastic bags, this blog recommends some simple sustainable swaps that will help ensure that you can be part of the solution to plastic pollution.
What is Plastic Free July?
It’s a global month-long drive to cut down on our plastic consumption and raising awareness of single use plastics. Did you know that the largest market for plastics today is packaging materials? This rubbish now accounts for nearly half of all plastic waste generated globally – most of it never gets recycled or incinerated. Scary reading! There’s also more than 5 trillion pieces of plastic already floating in our oceans*, so it’s clear if we want to save our oceans, countryside and communities, we all need to be mindful of our habits, particularly of single use plastics, by cutting down on what we buy, reusing what we already have or simply switching to reusable products.
(*Stats from National Geographic).
(Photo credit, Ron Lech, Pexels.com)
Easy ways to be mindful of our plastic habits
- Avoid pre-packed fruit, vegetables, meat and fish.
- Buy dried foods (e.g. grains, nuts, spices) in bulk (rather than packaged).
- Source detergents from bulk barrels (rather than buy it bottled).
- Reduce the amount of soft drink bottles used (e.g. consume less or make your own ‘soda’).
- Avoid take-away food in plastic containers.
- Choose bar soaps in place of liquids in plastic containers.
- Use reuseable drinking straws
- Avoid buying bottled water (e.g. by taking a reusable bottle of tap water).
- Take your own reusable shopping bags.
- Avoid a single-use (disposable) coffee cup by bringing your own reusable one (or dining in).
- Prepare lunchboxes without plastic wrap.
- Avoid lining bins with plastic bags.
- Shop at farmers markets or small independent stores to avoid packaging.
How is Y.O.U Underwear helping with reducing single use plastic?
We’ve converted to bar shampoo! In a bid to make our bathrooms plastic free, we’ve lost the bottles in favour of washing hair with hydrating and rebalancing shampoo bars. The KIND2 range has won multiple beauty awards for gentle cleansing your hair, leaving it soft, shiny and smooth. The bars last for ages and they also have a trial size, so are definitely worth giving a go if you haven’t before.
We also sell reusable vegan and organic cotton food wraps. This set of 3 is an ideal replacement for plastic cling film that can be reused many times. These wraps are 100% vegan and home compostable and are made in the UK from organic cotton and natural vegan wax.
A final great plastic swap is this set of 3 GOTS certified organic cotton produce bags. The pack contains: 1 x Organic Net Bag, 1 x Organic Bread Bag and 1 x Lightweight Bag. They’re perfect for carrying fruit, veg and bread as they weighs almost nothing on the scales and the net bag perfect is for shopping at a farmers market.
So there you have it, our top swaps to kick-start Plastic Free July! We hope you enjoy trying them and creating some new healthy habits. Don’t forget, Y.O.U Underwear is on a mission to have as positive an impact as possible, across all areas of the business, so if you shop online with us, all your items will be sent in biodegradable mailing bags as we continue to reduce our waste as much as possible!
