The Big Plastic Count Part 2

Like the last post, this one is also about the Big Plastic Count, but after it has happened. My family got our results back when we finished, so I thought I’d share them. We were not perfect, and I’d like to compare it to others too, but here is some of the information we got:

• We used 97 bits of plastic in one week

• This is equivalent to 5044 bits of plastic in a year

• If all households were the same as ours, the UK would use 141,736,400,000 bits of plastic in a year

• 32% of it was hard plastic

• 68% was soft plastic

• 9% of it was recycled in the UK

• 12% exported to other countries

• 28% put into landfill

• 51% of it was incinerated

Obviously every week is different depending how many plastic products you finish and throw away etc, but, as a family of four, those were our results. It is shocking to know that only 9% was recycled in the UK, because every other way of getting rid of plastic is terrible for the environment. 

The Big Plastic Count not only helps investigate the national usage of plastic, but also helps you realise what things you personally need to do. For example, I know that my family needs to reduce how much we use soft plastic because it is much more difficult to recycle than hard plastic. Only 1 in 10 local councils collect soft plastic to recycle. Anyway, the national results will be released mid-July, so I’ll have to wait until then to compare results. 

The Big Plastic Count has a “Living with Less Plastic” Handbook, that I thought I’d mention. It contains how to reduce plastic in all aspects, and talks about how it's okay to not be able to help if you're unable to for any reasons, because plastic products can really improve anyone's life if they have accessibility issues. It's more of a 'do what you can'. Other things you could do though are: sign petitions, write to local MPs, join in with like-minded people... It's so easy but then it's so complicated.

Thank you for reading this week's post. See you in the next one!

Violet

xxx

The Big Plastic Count! 🛍️

This is a bit of a short notice, but from tomorrow, the 16th May 2022, to the 22nd May (over the week) the Big Plastic Count is taking place. It's a huge event, that has got over 150,000 participants, all of whom are schools, communities, businesses, families etc. They are striving to get to 200,000 people! It's an investigation that counts the amount of plastic we use and throw away in a week and it's the UK's biggest national investigation, brought together by Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic. The goal is to make the government reduce single use plastic by 50% by 2025. 

To take part all you have to do is go onto their website and sign up. Then you get to tally (which you can download and print off or do online) of the types of plastic you use that week. After that, you will get your 'plastic footprint' and with the national results they'll try to push the government into action. Click here to get to the Big Plastic Count website. 

We need to reduce plastic waste because recycling things isn't gong to do the entire job. Reducing plastic helps to reduce pollution because we're using less raw materials (which are bad because they result in biodiversity loss, soil degradation etc), saves money because, for example, you're not buying a plastic bottle everyday when you have a metal one, and, of course, reduces the amount of waste going into landfills and incinerators. Different types of plastics decompose at different speeds, but it could take from 50-600 years to do so, but we just keep buying and throwing away more and more (over 90% of it isn't recycled) because it's just a cheap and comfortable thing to use. Click here to find out more. 

Thank you so much for reading this week's post. I hope I can go back to weekly posts, but for now it might just be fortnightly. See you next time!

Violet

         xxx

The Little Things You Can Do!

In today's post, I'm talking about some little things you can do to have a green life.  You may have read a few of these in other posts, but it's always good to have a reminder! 😀 

To reduce food waste: 

• Eat your leftovers for lunch. Yesterday, I went to a football match with friends and afterwards we went to a chip shop to get chips, and the portion sizes were huge! I could hardly eat half of it - so I saved it for my family the next day and for lunch the three of us split it and each had a substantial amount.

To reduce clutter: 

• 
  Borrowing and gifting old things. I've been having a huge clear out the past week and and I've got heaps of things I don't want anymore. My mum put them in the local online swap-shop and they were all gone in a few hours!
• Think before you buy.  There's a hierarchy (or a buyerarchy) of what you should do before buying something.  In order of least to most of what you should do it is: buy, make, thrift, swap, borrow, use what you have. 
  

To change habits:

• Swapping from non-eco-friendly to green things. It's easy to make small changes, like plastic bottles to bars of soap, making sure things are cruelty free, even non-eco-friendly to recycled toilet paper.  For example, we use Serious Tissues. 
• Buy fewer books, go to the library; unplug anything you don't use often; use a watering can instead of a hose; have a shower instead of a bath.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you did something for Earth Day last Friday - and commemorated the life of Stephen Lawrence too. 

Thank you for reading!

Violet

         xxx