30 Days Plastic Free

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I made a pledge six months ago to attempt this adventure around Australia plastic free. I knew it was a big call. Plastic is everywhere in our daily lives. If you don’t blink an eye and go about your daily routine, chances are you will take home bags full of the stuff. And there are certainly places where it is simply unavoidable. But hey why not give it a red hot crack I thought.

I’m a Marine Biologist and I care deeply about the environment, most importantly our Oceans. After three years of learning about our human influence that has been deteriorating her wellbeing, I’ve taken on a responsibility, and a desire to start living for her. And so, here we go, Jack and I in our Toyota Hiace pimped out as our mini home on wheels destined to circuit this big island…plastic free. After numerous heated conversations with Jack…who lives and breaths Shapes crackers, we came to an agreement. We would “try” the first thirty days on the road plastic free, and see how we go from there. Perfect, a great place to start, and maybe he’ll fall in love with the idea and forget that Shapes even existed…

So why do this? I’m not going to save the oceans by going plastic free. I’m not going to reduce the human consumption of waste or trigger the supermarkets to reduce their packaging. I’m doing it for the challenge. I’ve been steering clear of easy to avoid plastics for a while now, I just want to take it to that next level and see what I discover from it all. It’s a personal experiment to see if we can survive physically & mentally with all obstacles involved for thirty days travelling up the east coast of Australia in a van.

DAY 11 - October 19th
Seal Rocks, NSW

It’s day eleven on the road up the east coast of Australia, and the sun has just set over the hill as we get stuck into cooking up some tasty Dahl for dinner.

So far, it has honestly been cruisey! We’ve been completely and utterly plastic free for eleven days now and we’re still eating like kings! Driving up the east coast I knew would be smooth sailing. It’s foody galore and a bulk food store in almost every other town.


Tricks of the trade so far are:

  • Buy all your fresh fruit and veg from big markets on the side of the road or local farmers stalls

  • Byo your mesh bags so you can avoid the plastic produce bags

  • Head to the butcher with a couple big tupperware containers, they still have to grab the meat with a sheet of plastic but you avoid them wrapping it in the stuff and handing it to you in a bag.

  • Get your hands on a bread bag! This has been such an easy way to purchase bread without the common plastic packaging from a bakery and keep it fresh!

  • If you’re heading for the supermarkets of course take your shopping bags but have some tupperware containers in their too. These are super handy to grab your deli meats, salami, ham, bacon, or even olives and feta too! The deli ladies just pop the price sticker on your container and they’ll have a little chuckle with you too. (WARNING not all supermarkets will say yes to this, try your luck ;)

Ofcourse it feels good to walk away from a supermarket or food store completely free of plastic but I’m now caught in a trap. Once you get hooked on “seeing” the plastic, you’ll never be able to “unsee” it again. And sometimes it really taints the way I see things. I no longer see the object for what it is, but what it’s made of. And sometimes all I can hear is “plastic, plastic plastic”. It’s unhealthy. Yes the plastic but too my way of thinking. How can we live in this world at ease if we are constantly trying to avoid what’s being thrown at us all day every day? We have to live our lives right? Well I’m coming to this realization…

 
DAY 19 - October 27th
Crescent Head, NSW

“I’ve realised that choosing to live plastic free completely changes your diet as well!!!” – Jack.

Day nineteen and I’m hungry. I’ve had leftover pasta on some toast for lunch, I’ve had my apple with peanut butter, I’ve had some dates and coconut…but I’m still hungry! Boy oh boy, the cravings for some vita-weets and hommus is high right now. I don’t think I’ve ever missed dip so much in my life. Or cheese. Like real bluey gooey cheese. It’s been heart breaking (for our sweet tooth and biscuit loving tummys), yet eye opening to walk down the aisles of the supermarket and realise how little we can buy simply due to the packaging…There are some aisles where literally every product has a plastic component to it! What happened to the good old days of cardboard and glass?

This 30 day challenge rules out all plastic items yes, but also any single use packaging too. This includes wrappers of any sort, pasta, noodle, and chip packets, the foil that seals Jacks beloved Shapes, sweet and savoury crackers, the plastic bags that contain the cereals, muesli, sealed cheeses, plastic bottles or plastic cartons holding milk, mayo, sauces, condiments…and the list goes on.

Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll make it to my next diary entry alive ;)

 
Week 1 off our plastic free diet...

 

We are spending more, buying more unnecessary snacks, not eating as healthy...wow it’s amazing how much plastic really affected our diets, budget and way of eating.

Living without plastic packaged foods you skip all the junk foody snacks like chips, choccy, sweet and savoury crackers. And so when it comes to wanting a snack, there just weren’t any in the pantry other than some fruit or nuts from the whole food store. So our diets became simply three meals a day. A sustaining breakfast of oats and banana, big salad sandwiches with falafels if we were lucky for lunch and then dinner was a hearty meal of chicken curry, bangers and mash, pasta or cous cous n veg. We were becoming more and more excited to enjoy the pleasures of a meal in the day, rather than nibbling all day on snacks here and there.

Now, on the other side in the plastic consumer world, we are tasting cheese as if it were the first time, munching on some salty chips as if they’d just been invented, spoiling our sandwiches with Japanese mayonnaise cause we can! haha.

We’ve learnt a huge amount about ourselves, convenient food, consumerism and just the way packaging makes the world go round today. There are many things that we continue to do to avoid the plastic we buy that I believe everyone can do quite easily; purchasing bread from a bakery and popping it in your own bread bag, bundling your fruit and veg in reusable cloth or mesh bags, simply BYO shopping basket and bags (it’s trendy now 😉), purchase milk in a carton rather than plastic bottle, never ever buy bottled water in Australia, use Tupperware containers or beeswax wraps instead of gladwrap...and lots of other little things that you too can discover by just giving it a go. Once you’ve started avoiding it, it will come naturally and you begin to zone out the other stuff.

It is impossible in this day and age living in a regular town, with a regular lifestyle to live completely sustainably. At the end of the day we can just do our best whilst still living the best life we can. And just remind yourself why you’re doing it - we’re doing it for the sea and everything intertwined.

Olivia Rose