[007] – SHOPPING PLASTIC FREE WITHOUT A LOCAL ZERO WASTE SHOP

Plastic is big news right now, and it feels like the rest of the world is finally waking up to the scale of the issue and starting to look around for ways to reduce the amount of single use plastics being used and then simply thrown away each day. We’re starting to realise that there is actually no ‘away’, that our rubbish has to  go somewhere. And that in the case of plastics it may well be sitting in landfill or in our oceans and waterways for the next several hundred years.

As a result, many of us are starting to scrutinise the contents of our own bins much more closely (who said sustainable living wasn’t glamorous?!) and finding that  plastic packaging from food makes up a significant portion of the contents.
Here in the UK, bulk aisles in supermarkets aren’t commonplace as they are in the US, meaning that all of our pantry staples, things like pasta and rice, and dried fruit come in plastic packaging which is often not easily recycled.
Thankfully, more and more zero waste or bulk stores are opening up around the UK, but what happens if, like me, you don’t have one near you?

This is where Plastic Free Pantry comes in – it is SUCH a genius idea, and one I totally wish I had come up with!
You can simply go online and order those pantry staples, the pasta, the rice, the dried fruit, and even things like cocoa, or muesli, and they get delivered to your house in compostable packaging!
The business is only 6 months old as we record this in June 2018, and Kim herself says it has been something of a whirlwind, but I think she is really on to something with this idea, and I can only see it going from strength to strength.

So grab a plastic free cuppa, get comfy and listen in to this inspiring tale of one person’s determination to take action on plastic pollution.

Useful links

• Plastic Free Pantry
• Food Assembly
• Natureflex
• Journey to Zero Waste Facebook group
• Terracycle
• Plastic free sticky tape
• Truthpaste – plastic free toothpaste
• Denttabs – plastic free toothpaste tabs with flouride
• Hubbub’s microfibres campaign – #WhatsInMyWash
• Pebble magazine’s 21 best zero waste shops in the UK
• My Sustainable Life community on FB - do come and join us!