Day 14 'The Big Four' Part 1

Plastic Bags

Inspired by the inspirational podcast Slow Your Home we have decided to do a series of four blogs on 'The Big four'. Four single use plastics that we challenge all our friends, family and readers to stop using altogether, with some easy swaps and changes of habit.

The Big four single use plastics are:

plastic shopping bags

drinking straws

takeaway coffee cups

plastic water bottles

While our goals for Plastic Free July do not include becoming a strict Plastic Free Household, we feel that eliminating these four single use plastic items is easy, and will have a really big impact. There really is no need to use any of these items - there are so many alternatives.

We have been working towards reducing our reliance on plastic bags for quite some time. But they still manage to find their way into our house and typically end up lining our rubbish bin.  Plastic Free July has been great motivation for us to really focus on setting up a range of habits and practices to ensure that we don't contribute to demand for these items ever again.

Save the turtles, say NO to plastic bags

Australians use around 4 billion plastic bags each year. Over three quarters of them are sent to landfill after a single use. A huge waste of resources, and a massive environmental problem. Too many plastic bags end up as litter on our beaches. Recent University of Queensland research found that 30 percent of turtle deaths in Moreton Bay are caused by the ingestion of plastic debris.

It's so easy to pack a reusable bag (or two)!

The easiest, and best thing we can all do is use re-usable bags (or a backpack) to carry shopping. That's it.

Keep them in the car, or taken them with you when you might be going shopping. There are some great lightweight fabric pocket fold up bags that easily fit in even the smallest pocket or handbag. Buy supermarket green bags if you must, but there are lots of awesome shopping bags out there, and you can always get creative and make your own.

Our eclectic collection of cloth grocery bags

Newsflash

So as of today Australia's two major grocery stores have announced that they are (finally) going to phase out single use plastic bags.

See:

• http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/woolworths-ditches-plastic-bags/news-story/9333ba06907457105729b98ecc276469
• http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-14/woolworths-to-phase-out-plastic-bags-around-the-country/8709336
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/07/13/woolworths-to-ban-single-use-plastic-bags-from-next-year_a_23029296/

Some of our family's suggestions and ideas we'd love to share:

• Check out Slow Your Home - Plastic: Say No to the Big 4, and http://www.noplasticbags.org.au/alternatives/
• The rubbish bin dilemma - we still don't have perfect answer but we are now trying a few approaches. This includes putting dry/clean items straight into our unlined kitchen bin, and putting wet items into discarded soft plastic wrappings, or cardboard boxes/ a sheet of newspaper.

Questions

Do you really need all those plastic bags?