Plastic Free July

Andrea Hodgetts, Head of Strategic Partnerships for FLS/FMS and OVPH Sustainability Lead, shares with us what motivated her to start cutting single use plastic (SUP) waste and how Plastic Free July® (PFJ) helped her to do this.

Many of us will have heard about the emerging threat associated with plastic pollution. Its effects are found everywhere: in the air, on land and in our oceans. For me, the realisation of just how bad the problem is came in 2018 when I spent five months traveling around South America. As I traversed the lengths of Chile and Argentina I was horrified by the amount of plastic waste littering the sides of the roads.

Self-righteously I convinced myself it wasn’t anywhere near as bad in the UK, but when I returned home, I knew I was just kidding myself. I also knew that because of my lifestyle at the time, some of it was my fault and I needed to take responsibility.

Initially I just made small changes such as buying a Keepcup, making sure I always kept a fold-up bag in my handbag and I pledged that I would no longer use cling film and find sustainable alternatives. Soon afterwards, I discovered a zero waste shop (aptly name Zéro) had opened up in Merton Abbey Mills, close to where I lived which helped reduce my SUP waste enormously.

The big change came in June 2019 when Facebook’s algorithms had picked up on my interest in sustainability and showed me an advert about Plastic Free July® (PFJ). PFJ is a key initiative of the Plastic Free Foundation, an organisation that aims to see a world free of plastic waste.

The premise is to start small, by making the pledge to reduce your plastic waste for a month, with the intention being that this will continue. Being an incredibly goal driven person, this gave me something to aim for so I jumped headlong into my first Plastic Free July!

To track the changes I made and alternative SUP free products I tried I kept a blog: Andrea goes plastic free. It included things like changing to soap from shower gel, avoiding ready made dips, giving up crisps and savoury snacks and worst of all for me, no Haribo!

Over the course of that one month I ended up generating 52 pieces of SUP waste. 25 of these were the sticky plastic labels you get on individual vegetables when you don’t buy them in a multipack. For a full list see: https://plasticfreeandrea.blogspot.com/2019/07/31st-july-2019.html

Annually this would equate to 624 items of plastic, against the current estimated average of 3432 per household[1]. Unfortunately I’d not had chance to keep a full track of what my usage was before this, but the based on the items I’d generated and the number of things that I’d stopped buying I would estimate this would have been about 50% less than usual.

Looking back it’s interesting to see the different things I started doing, how many of them I’ve stuck with and how many have fallen by the wayside. In 2019 I loved the natural plastic free deodorant, but around a year later, for some reason I started reacting to it. Despite trying five other types of waste free deodorants I’ve not found another that works for me yet so I’ve had to revert to plastic containing varieties.

However I still make and swear by my bathroom/kitchen cleaner made from all purpose concentrate, white vinegar and water, the first two ingredients comings from a zero waste shop. Sadly, the fabulous Zéro closed in 2022. However, Tooting market has one called BYO which whilst slightly less convenient has a fantastic range of products.

So am I still such a low generator of SUP waste? No, I wouldn’t say I was, but (other than the deodorant!) it’s pretty much all food associated, with most coming fruits such as berries that you just can’t buy in anything other than plastic.

Will I be doing PFJ this year? Absolutely. It’s the annual reset that I need to start shopping more consciously and less for convenience. For anyone that wants to take that first step to reducing their SUP waste it’s a great place to start!

See a list of zero waste shops in London.

[1] https://www.statista.com/study/51904/plastic-waste-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/

Photo by mali maeder on Pexels