Kicking Off Plastic Free July: a 30 Day Plastic Detox

Hello and welcome back! This week I am kicking off my challenge for the month. In the next 30 days I plan to live without the usage of single use plastic! The plastic free July has been a challenge that gathered a lot of attention and participants last year. And as I didn’t make it last year, I wanted to do it this year super bad.

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About The Plastic Crisis

Well, if you didn’t hear about the plastic crisis we are living in, let me ask you one question: are you living under a rock? If you haven’t heard about the climate crisis we are currently in, let me break it for you.

If you think about your daily life, do you really pay attention to the amount of plastic you use? Just think about your bathroom. I am pretty sure that most of your stuff comes in a bottle of plastic. Let it be your shampoo, your shower gel or your tooth paste, all this packaging is going to outlive you. Plastic actually never degrades, it just breaks into tinier pieces. These pieces, also known as micro-plastics enter our food chain and poison us. By now there is micro-plastic in almost every beer, fish and even in salt. This is not very healthy, as you can imagine.

And now you are not alone. Almost every single person on earth uses a huge amount of single use plastic everyday. This piled up and is now chilling in our oceans. Marine wildlife is choking on it and dying. Basically none of our children is going to experience a plastic free beach or ocean!

Plastic Free July for Awareness

For plastic free July, thousands of participants refuse on all single use plastics for a month. Of course, this isn’t a solution for good, but it is a way to become aware of how much plastics we use on a daily basis and that to get creative in ways of how to reduce it! And on top of that, it is creating more awareness for this serious topic. The more participants the better.

Why do I Want to take part?

For me, quitting as much plastic as I can has come a daily task. My bathroom is 90% plastic free, same goes with the rest of my home. Except the kitchen. It is the place where I struggle the most to keep it plastic free. I still buy a lot of snacks, processed food and fruits wrapped in plastic. As I am bound to conventional grocery stores, I am not really having a choice there. But I want to take Plastic Free July as my chance, to embrace more of a plastic free lifestyle. It probably won’t be that easy, but I really want to push it through.

The Preparation

As with almost anything, preparation is key and the plastic free life is no exception to it.

To prevent plastic from entering your life, you have to get a few items. As I mentioned that I want to focus on changing my way of buying groceries, I will now present to you, what I will carry for saving on plastic while being in the supermarket.

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So as I already said, there are some handy items, that will help me to say no to that nasty packaging when I am shopping for groceries . These are:

My bag for grocery shopping
Small bags for storing plastic free
A jar for storing stuff, that can’t be stored in a fabric bag (like olives)
Tupperware in case I might buy meat (what doesn’t happen most of the time).
My eyes. (A joke. But essential for ditching plastic is to have a look for alternatives wrapped in paper instead of plastic.

Reusable Cotton Bag for Plastic Free July

Most important tool for avoiding plastic bag: one made from fabric!

Hopefully this should be enough to ban most of my packaging trash. If you are looking for further things to stop plastic from entering your kitchen let me give you my top 5:

- A stainless steel waterbottle & a brita filter are essential for staying hydrated in a plastic free matter.

- A box / bowl to store your veggie scraps. As I don’t have a bin for organic waste, I always collect mine and dump it in my mother’s bin. This is not the best solution but at least I do my composting.
- Glass or stainless steel tupperware will store your food and left overs, so you won’t have to throw them away.
- Beeswax Wrappers work like cling wrap and can be reused, reused and reused.

Cloth rags instead of paper towels. It is so much cheaper and eco friendly. An absolute win!

Also these were just a few examples, more or less the standards. For further solutions, you can either do some quick research on Youtube or Google or my favourite thing: get creative. There are many solutions and options sitting in your brain, that you get to when you just try to be Creative.

Do You Want to Ditch Plastic Too?

So I hope that you are completely hooked on by the will of ditching plastic? Here is one tip: before you dive too deep into all the fancy gear, firstly analyse your consumption of plastic. Collect your trash for a week and observe your usage. Of course some items can be purchased from the very beginning, like bags for grocery shopping. But everything else let me tell you: wait until you buy it. Some things like a tongue scraper, or super expensive metal tupperware just won’t serve anyone. Be careful of what you bring into your life and only allow what serves you best!

Basically there is no restrictions for you! What matters is that you take a step out of your comfort zone and take part in Plastic Free July. For yourself, your surroundings, future children and the world. Are you in?