A blog by the Dean & Mrs Waine (Stephen and Lizzie) who are trying to live without single-use plastic at the Deanery during Lent.
Friday 16th March - day 30
If we continue with our plastic habits, the oceans will have more plastic than fish by 2050. Ellen McArthur Foundation
Plastic Soup
Providing you’ve not taken the same stance as Erik Hagerman this week, you could not fail to notice in the media the concerns raised on single use plastic. We hear that the River Tame in Denton, Greater Manchester has the worst level of microplastic pollution ever recorded anywhere in the world. We started our Lent without plastic because, you will recall, of the Blue Planet II series highlighting the devastation of plastic in our oceans, but scientists have now categorically proven that the problem really does start much closer to home. One section of the river was found to have 517,000 plastic particles per square metre of sediment.
So, what are these plastic particles? We’ve talked about microbeads before, but microplastics are pieces of plastic smaller than 5 millimetres. They enter the environment through the defragmentation of larger plastic that has been left in the environment or directly through things like synthetic fibres from clothes.
It has been shown that a single polyester fleece jacket can release more than 1900 plastic fibres per wash while, until they were banned in January, plastic microbeads were common in toothpastes, shampoos and shower gels. It highlights that it’s not enough just to give up the use of the 5p carrier bag. Of course, it is a combination of industrial effluent and domestic wastewater, but this research highlights that plastic pollution is a threat to our natural environment and the only way to reduce the amount which enters our land, rivers and the sea to protect wildlife for future generations is to start looking in our homes where we can cut microplastics.
If we’ve not managed to inspire you to take your own tubs to the deli or meat counter at the supermarket, then at least today take on these 5 easy wins:
- Use paper mushroom bags to transport loose fruit from supermarkets and grocers instead of plastic.
- Buy a butter dish so that you can purchase butter wrapped in greaseproof paper rather than in cartons. Likewise choose cheese which is wrapped in paper instead of plastic.
- Leave packaging at the till. Make excess packaging a problem for the supermarkets.
- Swap single-use plastic cigarette lighters for matches. Environmentalists are frequently finding plastic cigarette lighters in the stomachs of dolphins, whales and birds.
- Ditch plastic bottles and drink water from the tap. Buy a steel bottle to transport tap water. Metal carriers also stop chemicals from plastic leaching into water.
And that last point is such an obvious one – the World Health Organisation has announced a review into the world’s most popular bottled water brands after it found more than 90% contained tiny pieces of plastic - 325 plastic particles for every litre of water being sold. Much research needs to be carried out to understand whether it is the plastic bottle, the lid or from the water source. And of course, it’s not to say when we turn on the taps in our homes that we are not drinking particles, however the scientists wrote they had “found roughly twice as many plastic particles within bottled water” compared with their previous study of tap water.
We constantly use our ‘Beat The Microbead App’, but click here to see an online check.
For those of you who have been following our Blog from the beginning you will know that on day 1 (Ash Wednesday), we changed our toothpaste to a coconut oil based paste which contained no microbeads and came in a lovely glass jar; we can now report it's disgusting! But we will persevere until we find an alternative which matches the criteria.
Conditioner
Throughtout all this negativity, there has been an excellent result - Waitrose cheese counter now uses only one piece of plastic to wrap your cheese in. It's a small step but as the assistant confirmed today - there are so many people coming in with their own tubs that they have decided to look at the use of plastic where they can. It may be a small step but one piece of plastic instead of two each time a piece of cheese is purchased is a start.
Hair conditioner has been a bit of a trial over the past week; the conditioner bars from Lush have left hair in the Deanery looking like straw, vinegar has been suggested, along with egg yolk, but a new purchase of 'Avocado Conditioner Bar for Dry Hair' from Plastics Free, has saved the day. It comes wrapped in paper, 100% natural, fragrance free and not tested on animals - resulting in a lot of wins! Do have a look at their website for other suggestions by clicking here.
Tubs
This week has been an extremely busy week and what better way to reward ourselves than with a take-away. We immediately thought Indian - it would come in metal containers and whilst lids are coated in some form of plastic, we think we can reuse them. Picture the shock when the curry came in plastic containers! But they will be reused for storage - or taking to the farmers market/supermarkets.
Thoughts are looming to the annual Easter Egg hunt for the Cathedral Choristers held at the Deanery. The eggs are not a problem, all purchased without plastic, but the fact the choristers seem to consume a thousand Hot Cross buns between them means that a trial batch of buns will be baked this weekend. Hopefully with some satisfying results including no plastic wrapped buns.
For those about to plan their 2018 summer festival trips, take a look at this really handy guide by clicking here.
Co-op want your rubbish ideas! Log onto www.joinin.coop.co.uk to see how you can make suggestions for them to deal with their amount of packaging. It's great to see that supermarkets are listening and beginning to take action.
Facts:
Recycling just one plastic bottle saves enough energy to power a 60W light bulb for six hours.