Plog - Plastic Free Planet UK

My Plastic Free July

June 28, 2018

Alternative Products, General Musings, Plastic, single use plastic

Signing up for ‘Plastic Free July’ you are faced with neat column of tick boxes, with the statement: During Plastic Free July I will: Avoid single-use plastic packaging Target takeaway items (the Top 4: bags, bottles, straws and coffee cups) Go completely plastic-free I hovered and hesitated then realised – I don’t do take away…

Guilt, fatigue, regret and other plastic related emotions

May 18, 2018

General Musings, Plastic

My journey to reduce my plastic only started in January 2018. It is called a journey for a very good reason – because you are moving in a direction – a positive one. If you think of it like a road – there are always people who are miles ahead of you, there are people…

Shave like its 1899

April 18, 2018

Alternative Products, Environment, Plastic, Recycling

120 years ago a small town US salesman soaped his face to begin his daily shave with a cut throat razor whilst pondering whether there might be an easier way to shave. The salesman was King Camp Gillette and he would go on to invent one of the world’s most successful products – the safety…

3 sneaky stealth plastics

March 29, 2018

Education, Environment, Microplastic, Plastic, single use plastic

If you want to avoid using so much plastic, it is pretty easy to see what has been wrapped or packaged in it. Some plastics are not so easy to identify (i.e. for recycling) but they still look and feel like plastic. Except there is a growing number of ‘stealth plastics’ in our lives –…

5 easy swaps to reduce plastic

March 20, 2018

Alternative Products, Plastic, single use plastic

plastic, plastic free, reducing plastic, refuse the straw, single use plastic

We all like easy, right? Well, the road to reducing plastic has varying levels of ease, some things are as simple as just saying “No, thank you”, others things take hours of research or require a massive change to your shopping habits – so lets start with the five easiest changes you can make. Our…

A great, big, tiny problem – Microplastic

March 15, 2018

Environment, Microplastic, Plastic

environmental disaster, health, microplastic, nurdles, plastic, single

Scientific findings rarely make the headlines, but driving to work listening to Radio 2 (yeah, I know, I’m old) it was announced that the World Health Organisation is launching a major investigation after a small US study found microplastics in nearly all bottled water it tested. The study was carried out at the State University…

Is there a badge for that?

March 12, 2018

Education, General Musings, Girlguiding, Plastic

environment, girlguiding, plastic, plastic challenge badge

STOP THE PRESS! Stop! Just stop! … and look at the beautiful badges that arrived this morning! “What’s all the fuss about?” You say… “They’re just some badges”. But no, take a close look, can’t you see it? Look closer, yep right there – that is the start of something EPIC. What is the badge…

Plastic – the new hole in the ozone layer

March 6, 2018

Environment, General Musings, Plastic

environment, planet earth, plastic, plastic free

Remember 1985? I was only 4 but I remember it vividly, life was simpler (or maybe it just appeared to be). I remember sitting on the back of my mum’s bicycle as she took me to nursery, I had little hand-me-down shoes that my mum had painted red, we had scorching hot summers, snowy winters…

The steep plastic learning curve

March 5, 2018

Plastic, Recycling

So I started to write an educational resources for Girlguiding about plastic. It was at this point I realised I knew pretty well nothing – How could I teach and preach about using less plastic if I wasn’t doing it myself? Thus begins the steepest learning curve of my life (bar becoming a mother –…

Every journey begins with a single step

March 2, 2018

General Musings, Plastic

plastic, single use plastic

If you are reading this, I believe you may have already taken your first step – awareness. My road to a plastic free future Until early 2018, I was blissfully unaware the effect plastic was having on our planet. Like many, the first wake up call was Blue Planet II – or the Attenborough effect, as…