Eco Friendly Changes – Easy Ways to Ditch The Plastic

Shopping Bags

I know most people tend to take their own shopping bags these days since the bag charge came in but I thought I’d buy some extra little bags. We keep our bags in the house because we tend to go shopping in whatever car/van is easiest at the time, so leaving them in the car isn’t practical for us. Whenever I used to pop to the shops for a few bits, I’d always forget to grab a bag. So I bought a little net one that can just fold up and live in my handbag for those moments. It looks tiny, but it expands SO much and can hold a lot more than you’d think. I bought this one* (affiliate link).

I still see so many people picking up those little plastic bags for loose fruit and veg, which obviously makes it easier than carrying a handful of loose onions around and dropping everywhere. Morrisons have started doing paper bags instead now, but I thought I’d take it a step further and buy my own little produce bags – I bought these ones* (affiliate link). You can buy so many different types, but as we do ‘Scan-As-You-Shop’ a lot, I loved that these have a little tab for sticking the little self scan labels on, and they come in 3 different sizes. They weigh barely anything, so if you do stick your produce in them and head to the tills, they don’t really add anything to the price. The guy at the checkout in Tesco yesterday was so interested in them and loved the idea!

Veg Boxes

We’ve just started getting veg boxes delivered to try them out and see how we get on. I remember my mum used to get the ones from Riverford delievered when I was younger, but we didn’t get on with them as back in the day, you didn’t get a choice of the veg that was being delivered each week, so we cancelled it. These days, you can swap out any veg you don’t like for veg you do!

We went to the Mind, Body, Spirit exhibition at the NEC a couple weeks ago, and Abel & Cole were there so i signed up for a box as they had an offer on. You just pick your box from the huge list – fruit, veg, mixed, jucing and they even do meat and fish boxes too. The mushroom containers are fully recyclable, but for anything else that comes in plastic (like our kale last week), you simply leave them in the box and pop it back outside on the day of your next delivery and the driver will take them back for you to be re-used! We also ordered a tin of Jackfruit as I’ve been craving some chicken shawarma lately, so I want to try re-create it with that! They even have a bakery, chilled and pantry section, so you could do your entire weeks shopping on there!

* This is not sponsored by Abel & Cole, I just wrote about them to provide more ideas to cut out the plastic!

The store was so well stocked, even selling a few other bits and bobs like fresh fruit and veg, kombucha, fresh orange juice and homemade nut milks. The selection of herbs and spices was amazing, and you could even buy loose leaf tea and coffee beans too. There’s also a small selection of household zero waste items like face cloths and metal straws. If you don’t have any of your own containers, they also have plenty of different ones that you can buy too – from glass jars, to mesh bags and paper bags.

We didn’t get too much, but we picked up plenty of puy lentils (french lentils) as I’ve been using them a lot in recipes lately and I keep running out. The whole container cost around £4 which I don’t think is too bad at all, as a bag from the shops costs just over £1 for 500g. Shane loves cashews, so we bought some plain raw cashews for him costing a whopping £10 (but cashews are expensive), some cumin, basil, giant cous cous and we treated ourselves to some chocolate covered strawberries, which were also pretty expensive. I wish we could have stocked up on more things, but we were already fully stocked!

Do you have any tips on reducing plastic in everyday use? Is there anything that you want to cut down on?

 

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