7 Tips For Living With Less Plastic

To celebrate Plastic Free July, we wanted to share our tips for living your life with less plastic.

We know that going completely plastic free can be very difficult, but there are so many swaps that you can make very quickly.
 

1) Remove plastic from your bathroom – Replace your plastic toothbrush!

Ever given a thought to how much your plastic toothbrushes are damaging the ocean?

According to National Geographic, if you laid out all of the toothbrushes thrown away in the US alone in just ONE year, they would wrap around the Earth a whopping FOUR times, and most of us will replace around 300 toothbrushes during out lifetime!

The swap is easy – start using a bamboo toothbrush instead! Toothbrushes made of bamboo are naturally antibacterial, antiviral and anti-fungal, along with being biodegradable when they come to the end of their life.

2) Replace your plastic sandwich bags with a reusable option.

When packing up sandwiches for the kids every day, or making lunches for yourself for work, have a think about how many plastic bags you will use and throw away. Even for a month alone, this number will be shocking.

Making the swap to a reusable alternative is a great way to rid your lifestyle of wasteful plastic products. Choose from sandwich boxes or sandwich bags to not only save the planet, but in the long run, to save yourself money!

A favourite of ours is the products from Keep Leaf. With a range of Lunch Bags and Sandwich Bags of different sizes and prints, these products are perfect for everyday use and are machine washable and dishwasher safe, making cleaning at the end of the day so much easier!

3) Carry reusable utensils and drinking straws.

We know when out and about it can be hard to avoid plastic utensils and drinking straws when getting takeaway food or drinks, but being prepared can help you avoid this. Investing in some reusable utensils and drinking straws to keep in your bag is an easy way to reduce your plastic waste.

Personally, we love stainless steel straws. Not only are they a long-lasting and sustainable alternative, they also look great in pretty much any drink – they’ll make your iced coffee look the part and multicoloured ones will jazz up your cocktails!

4) Shop local!

When shopping for food, try to shop local. Not only does this help the environment in terms of how far products travel to get to you, when you go to the local market you’ll usually notice significantly less plastic than when shopping in the supermarkets.

Local markets are a great place to use your produce bags and to be able to comfortably say no to plastic.

5) Buy in bulk (if you can!)

On the topic of shopping – buy in bulk if you can!

Think about how much plastic would be used for each little package of rice or pasta you use, versus buying a larger packet, or even better, buying from a zero-waste store into your own containers!

We know that storage or accessibility may be an issue with this point, so only buy in bulk if you can!

6) Say goodbye to plastic stationary.

Take a look at your desk and you’ll probably realise very quickly how much plastic you are surrounded by. From hole punches to pens, rulers to staplers, most, if not all of this will be plastic!

Find yourself some eco-friendly alternatives to equip yourself with, such as notebooks made from recycled packaging, bamboo pen pots, recycled tyre mousemats and so much more!

7) Buying a gift for a loved one? Find an eco-alternative!

Rather than purchasing mass produced gifts which contain lots of plastic, make the change and give your loved ones eco alternatives.

There are so many amazing products out there that are more friendly to the environment, such as recycled gifts, ethical homewares and gifts for gardening and outdoor living.

How will you be making changes within your lifestyle to reduce your single-use plastic?