#LentPlasticChallenge

Pop over to my other blog to follow my progress as I challenge myself to give up single use plastic for Lent.

http://zerowaist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/lent-plastic-challenge.html

Grazing

This morning I received my eagerly anticipated Graze box. I'd taken advantage of an offer in this Sunday's Observer and ordered myself one free box, to be followed next week by a second for £1.

Graze is a brilliantly conceived scheme which delivers healthy snacks to hungry office workers. Subscribers register and are asked to rate a long list of foods including seeds, nuts, dried fruit, flapjacks, olives, focaccia etc. They then choose a date to have their box delivered directly to their desk. Each cardboard box contains four snacks in individual plastic containers. There is a paper napkin and a pick for the olives. There is also a tiny personally addressed booklet detailing the nutrional details of each snack and another with more general information about the company. Genius!

My first box contained a West country cheddar, red onion and chutney focaccia, green olives in a citrus marinade, a bento mix and an americas nut mix. The focaccia was slightly stodgy but the bento mix was spicy and the americas nut mix crunchy. I haven't tried the olives yet.

Graze boxes are normally priced at £3.29, which is probably not unreasonable given the quality of the products and the impeccable service, but they're too expensive for my budget, so I don't think I'll be ordering any more, or at least not on a regular basis.

There is inevitably packaging involved - a cardboard box secured with two plastic bands, four plastic punnets, a paper napkin, a wooden pick and two booklets - but the claim is that these are either biodegradable, recyclable or recycled. I'll certainly be be able to recycle everything except the plastic bands and the plastic seals on the punnets.

It would, of course, be much cheaper and more environmentally friendly to buy larger quantities of these snacks and carry portions of them in to work in reuseable containers but, given that there will always be a significant proportion of the population who will not do so, and who would otherwise be opting for a chocolate bar or a packet of crisps, I reckon it's a welcome alternative.

Beth Terry - Where she leads, will we follow?

Almost Mrs Average on the Rubbish Diet directed me to this very moving video from Beth Terry of Fake Plastic Fish. I would urge you to watch it ... and then challenge you to give up one plastic item for ever.



I've bought myself a small aluminium water bottle which I have begun carrying around with me to avoid having to buy bottled drinks. I am now going to follow Beth's example and invest in a travel mug for those occasions I pop into a cafe for a latte.

Why don't you let me know what you'll give up?

Blowing my own Trumpet

This morning I received an email from Timothy Latz to let me know that my application to have my blog entered in the Best Green Blogs Directory has been successful, which I am very pleased about.

I received another email from a friend who sent me the link to A Month without Plastic, Christine Jeavons' attempt to live plastic free for the month of August. She plans to blog about it and the link to this will appear later today.

Funnily enough I was planning to do something similar myself in September and use this month as a dry run, to monitor the plastic I buy and throw away, to assess the enormity of the challenge and to consider some of the alternatives. So I shall be following Christine Jeavons' experiment with interest.

Christine Jeavons is, of course, not the first to blog about such matters. One of my favourites The Rubbish Diet, features in my sidebar.

How to Recycle Plastic if you live in Bristol

On my way to the pub last evening my attention was drawn to our local Aldi car park by a loud rattling noise. I peered through the bushes to discover that it was caused by a Recresco van emptying the plastic recycling container. I've never given much thought to how the container is emptied but I now know that this is achieved by connecting it to the lorry with a large plastic pipe and sucking the bottles out into the lorry where they are compressed. Apparently plastic is very expensive to recycle on account of its volume, and compressing it to a tenth of its original size makes collecting and transporting more efficient and therefore more economic.

I'd been minded to contact Bristol City Council to clarify exactly what kind of plastic I could legitimately place in the recycling container, but seeing the Recresco lorry prompted me to go straight to them instead. Their website was most informative and I have pasted below their definitive instructions regarding the recycling of plastic using their containers. This has cheered me up as it allows me to recycle even more than I thought I could!

WHAT CAN I PUT IN THE PLASTIC BANK?

This is a question we are asked a lot! It's difficult to list every single type of plastic container, there's just too many. So here is a guide:

We would like Plastic containers with ID numbers 1-2 as long as they are not excluded in the list below. If there is no Plastic ID on the item, the general rule, “Plastic Bottles” should be followed. This is because most plastic bottles are type 1 or 2. So you can be fairly certain that your plastic bottle will be acceptable. Any of the items described above can be recycled regardless of whether it has been recycled previously, that’s the great thing about recycling!

LIST OF UNACCEPTABLE ITEMS

We do not accept:

- Plastic Type 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,

- Plastic Toys

- Plastic Bags

- Cling Film or Bubble Wrap

- Non Plastic Items

- Video Cassettes- Drain Pipe
Any items that do not fit through the round opening in the bank as these damage our machinery.