Hello, from an almost sunny South Coast! Hopefully this is just a sea mist that will burn off quickly. We had such beautiful weather at the end of March, but April has mainly been cold. Too cold, a lot of the time, for me to enjoy gardening. Yesterday was the exception, I spent a most enjoyable afternoon out there. Over the years I’ve dabbled in growing my own vegetables, tomatoes, cucumber, courgettes & peppers did well in the greenhouse, until the middle section of roof blew off over winter, so that is now used mainly as a place of storage. Seedlings do alright on the table in there out of the worst of the weather until they are big enough to go out. As I sat there taking the geraniums out of their green plastic carry home tray, it dawned on me just how much single use plastic the home gardening industry uses. Here we all are, trying to be self sufficient & green, yet at the same time adding to the mountain of plastic waste.

Yes, I planted the sunflower seeds in coir plant pots & other various seeds are in cardboard tubes, but everything I buy is in plastic. The little pots can be used again, but looking around the greenhouse I will never in the next ten years use all these pots, but it is the flimsy carry home trays that are the biggest problem. They are stacked up in the corner & I doubt I will ever use them again. They may technically be recyclable, but ever since I took a couple of sacks of plastic bottles to the tip & was told to put them in with the main household rubbish, as there were no facilities to recycle them, I am sceptical. Some of the older ones are already disintegrating into small pieces. I am collecting those in old compost bags, along with split plastic pots. I don’t know what to do with them after that. Suggestions please…..How do you dispose of your garden plastics?

Getting rid of single use plastic inside the house has proved to be more successful. Changing back to bars of soap instead of liquid shower gel, shampoo & soap made a big difference straight away. Not buying any sauce, vinegar, oil etc. unless it is in a glass container & using those refill shops for tea, coffee, pasta, rice etc. that are popping up everywhere, has made things a lot easier. It’s the packaging that is the real headache in the kitchen. Even if you do use an unbleached, ethically recycled kitchen roll that disintegrates as soon as it sees water…….it will still come in a plastic wrapper!

Supermarket packaging remains the biggest problem when dealing with single use plastic. For food safety there is little that can beat it. When Covid restrictions allow I use a local farm shop. Well I say local, its 45 minutes up the road, which in itself is bad because of the petrol used. Once there though, plastic usage is minimal. The butchers counter wraps in paper, as does the deli. You are able to take your own container to fill with salads, sauces, grains, oil etc. If you don’t take your own you are encouraged to buy a reusable container, for future use. All veg is loose, soft fruits come in little cardboard boxes. I am glad to say that this does not make them expensive. As far as possible fruit & veg. is local to the area. Life being such as it is though, a trip there is a luxury, as a shop at the local supermarket only takes an hour from leaving home to arriving back. This problem lies fairly & squarely at the feet of the packaging manufacturers. If they don’t make the packaging, we can’t throw it away. As always though, it comes down to cost. There are products out there now, ethically packaged, but they are expensive.

I will continue to be aware of all my usage of plastic from earphones to doggy poo bags. It is a problem that is not going away anytime soon. Plastic is an amazing invention. It is virtually indestructible, used properly, many times it is a fantastic product. As long as we remember it is not a throwaway product. I do believe we are moving away from the throwaway society we became & moving back to, not exactly make do & mend, but passing things on via selling or free sites to someone, whilst we ourselves buy second hand too.

Give me some feedback….what are you doing to reduce single use plastic?

Love M. XXX