Plastic-free Challenge
- cobbesinead
- Aug 24
- 7 min read
Going plastic-free is obviously good for the planet…… but it’s also hard work, inconvenient, expensive and (worst of all) you risk becoming holier than thou and annoying everyone (Ha Ha! Is this kind of like going vegan???). Being a green warrior takes a delicate balance of trying your best while also turning a selective blind eye to things. I also know that the greater expense incurred is something that not everyone is in a position to choose, particularly when there is a family to feed. And of course, people are time-poor these days too, so convenience can win the day. So no judging anyone else for their choices!
Now, my inner green warrior has been prodding me along this road for the last few years already since I took part in some beach clean-ups about 10 years ago during my surfing days ( ooh, must just take a moment for a bit of nostalgia here). The amount of plastic waste was a eye-opening, to say the least.
(For more, check out this latest 2025 Oceana report by The Guardian on Ocean waste or follow @theoceancleanup on IG and FB).
Making New choices
One-by-one, I started choosing plastic-free options when they presented themselves. The best part is that greener versions of items also tend to be more natural and in many cases, locally sourced. So it’s a win for indigenous industry. On top of this, it is also believed that we imbibe less micro-plastics when our food isn’t stored in plastic packaging or containers, therefore it’s also a win for health too.
But going rigidly plastic-free for a month brought on a WHOLE NEW LEVEL of organization and threw up a few surprises for me. See below. But first, here’s a list of some of the changes I had already made, one-by-one over the last 4-5 years.
( Note: Urban Co-op is a bulk food and zero-waste store Limerick that sources products that are natural, organic, locally made where possible and have minimal packaging. Here’s a listing that may help in other areas).
Item | Change | Source/Info | Comments |
Hand soap/body wash | Faith in Nature refillable hand and body washes | Many Health food Stores Urban Co-op, Limerick | Re-fill the plastic or aluminium bottles in Urban Co-op |
Conditioner | Conditioner Bars or refillable Faith in Nature bottles | Sunvale Soap Company | Urban-Co-op Limerick Market |
Cleaning products | Re-fillable Lily’s products or make my own | Had to let this one go a bit when I got a house cleaner who uses her own products!! | |
Wash-up liquid | Re-fillable Lily’s (made in Cork) | Waste water from washing up using plant-based wash-up liquid can be used to water your plants in a drought | |
Body lotion | Home-made: non-smelly coconut oil with selected essential oils | Biona do a non-smelling coconut oil, in health food stores | Almond oil suits some skin better – in Indian foodstores. Made a few mistakes with the choice of essential oil…ugh! |
Face-cream | Sunvale Soap Company | A very sad adieu to my favourite Nivea after years of service but packaging was horrendous. | |
Deodorant | Vico (Irish-made) | Lovely range, last forever…but keep a regular spray when wearing black tops (to avoid white lines) | |
Toilet Paper | Who Gives a Crap (recycled or bamboo paper). Large % proceeds to re-foresting. | Bulk delivery. Individually wrapped in colourful paper, makes a friendly display for your bathroom. Last forever. | |
Vegetables & Fruit Worst culprit for packaging | Green earth organics (veg box delivery)
| Urban Co-op do a good range without packaging | |
General food items | Try to stick to glass jars and tins Or cardboard packaging |
| Most condiments come with a glass jar/bottle option, but they are usually pricier |
Water | Got a Brita Filter Jug and use aluminium Chilly’s water bottle | Co-op Stores | Cartridges can be returned to Co-op store and are recycled |
Sparkling water | Aarke Fizzy water maker | Harvey Norman | Use my filtered water to make lovely fizzy stuff. Faerly do a deal on returning the gas cartridges. |
Toothpaste (this one brings me a tear) | Smyle toothpaste tablets in a glass jar. Refillable. | Faerly Urban Co-op | By far the hardest one here….I miss the Colgate and make it my business to rob others’ toothpaste when I am staying over somewhere. |
Milk | Tetra pack only |
| Still annoyed over the silly plastic caps, can’t we not just open them the way we used to?? |
Kombucha | Make my own with a Happy Pear recipe | You need a SCOBI, tea and sugar. Makes a fresh batch every 2-3 weeks | Got a present of a SCOBI a few years ago which looks like a large Jelly fish living in my kitchen!! |
Plastic-Free July
So, being no stranger to making expensive (sigh!!) choices for the sake of the planet, doing Plastic-free July and becoming a purist for a month was a whole new level of effort. I decided to be incredibly rigid and rule out every teensy weensy bit of plastic that I could, just to see how hard it was. And it was…like…very hard.
My biggest discovery was that convenience food was just totally out. Making a ham and cheese sambo became a trawl to delis that cut ham and wrapped it in paper, and cheese in paper too, not to mention sourcing fresh bread without plastic packaging (Dunnes, take a bow: your sourdough was a great discovery). Ready-made hummus and pesto was out, so I found myself trying out new recipes for both, ready-made salads were out….so a lot more time was spent in the kitchen!
Treats
Getting a treat like sweets or buns was a particular challenge and it ended up feeling like a frenzied forage through shops, was never successful and always ended in a café. I acquired a serious addiction to Zest café and their round cupcake thingy dipped in chocolate. I DID try making my own bonbons and bliss balls, but the results weren’t nearly half as tasty ,despite being healthier. Lidl saved the day with their chocolate bar range, that are wrapped in foil and cardboard. ( Thank you Lidl, you are forgiven for the middle aisle!).
Bringing my own keep cup into coffee shops was okay, until I forgot it. Then it was a matter of checking whether their takeaway cups were lined with plastic or not and proceeding (or not) with the purchase. I did have to let up here once or twice, to be honest. Listen up coffee shops, don’t be so mean: if people are willing to pay €6 for a coffee, an extra 20c for you to buy a decent plastic free cup is not going to break your bank!
My favorite discovery
One of my conundrums was Kefir: I had just started a daily dose of it to improve my gut biome and was sourcing it in my local Centra, a Polish brand, but alas, it came in a plastic bottle. So I ended up buying Kefir grains ( in a health food store) and making it every day with fresh milk. Enter my hero product….Connaught Gold organic milk, totally plastic-free packaging. The little ‘plastic’ cap was even made of sugarcane…sweet! I have to travel across town once a week for it, but it is so worth it. Saddo that I am, it puts a big smile on my face when I buy it. Yoghurt was easy: Glenisk do organic and totally plastic free packaging made in a carbon-neutral plant. Yippee. I also discovered eco-friendly ‘plastic’ clingfilm, which was a lifesaver for all my home-made goods and paper-based ‘sellotape’.
Some other surprises:
Meat and fish pre-packaged in a supermarket were out, instead I want to a fishmonger or butcher and even then, they are mostly placed in a thin plastic bag, but preferable to hard plastic packaging. This is fine for me, as I don’t eat much of it. Could be expensive if you eat it daily. Frozen goods were also out.
Take-aways mostly come in hard plastic containers: you’ve got to eat in to eat out…. Big sigh! Ready-made soups are mostly in hard-plastic containers: why they can’t use tetra packs is beyond me. Most nuts and seeds are impossible to buy without plastic packaging, although I found a small selection in the Urban Co-op. I remember Lidl used to have serve-yourself nuts in large containers, but this had to be stopped because of the poor hygiene habits of the customers. Such a pity…..but completely understandable.
Visitors and gifts
I didn’t buy any new clothes or household items so nothing to note on that score. My biggest source of plastic was finishing off food items bought before the start of the month and also visitors: you can have all the best practices that you like but when other people are being kind and bring gifts, it’s a bit rude to give back the packaging that it comes in! I had to take that one on the chin.
A final word: don’t say a word
All in all, the month ended for me with a much greater awareness of convenience foods, how much packaging they contain and how time-poor we all are. Staying with convenience, we’re still a long way from zero-waste supermarkets like Negozo Leggero in Italy, but I’m keeping the dream alive…..
However, by far, my biggest learning from the month was to not share my experience with others too much: people get defensive and feel a bit judged when you talk green. In my experience, it’s best to keep your plastic-free ideas to yourself, unless asked! In fact, I’d love to see it mandatory for large workplaces to have a green officer with the power to make changes to procurement practices. Otherwise, green warriors like me just annoy people and create friction…so more laws please to take it out of our hands.
I think that it will only be when single-use plastics are prohibited by law, that manufacturers will have a level playing field and choices will become easier for consumers. Already a partial ban on things like polystyrene cups, plastic cutlery and cotton buds have changed practice and the EU is starting to ramp up it’s efforts so that their use will be restricted and all packaging will be forced to be recyclable by 2030. It’s a start.
For now, I’m letting my warrior rest up and giving her a nice bun from Zest!
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