I am making as many changes as possible to reduce the amount of plastic our household produces. A combination of David Attenborough and a video of a whale with hundreds of items of plastic in his stomach have really got to me. In my business I have swapped my mailing bags to eco-friendly, biodegradable, water resistant Kraft paper bags from Lil Packaging. I sent some fabric to a few volunteers for feedback and everyone loved them and confirmed their fabric arrived safely. A larger size is being worked on at the moment but until that comes out I am sticking to 100% recyclable mailing bags for anything over 2 metres. If you have ordered from me before you will know that I also wrap my fabric in tissue, this is made from recycled paper by The Tiny Box Company.
My next big step has been to start making ecobricks. Some plastic I can't avoid at the moment so if it can't be recycled or replaced I have been stuffing it into bricks. Take a look on their website for more information and join in. It is very satisfying to see how much you can squish into one bottle. It also meant I have paid more attention to packaging and labelling. I had no idea how little can actually be recycled. Change needs to happen.
I don't want to be hypercritical because I know that the fashion and fabric industry is not the most environmentally friendly industry but there are ways that you can help reduce plastic around your home, up cycle and make the most of your fabrics.
The thing about sewing or making your own, is that you have put a lot of love and thought into it. If you are making clothes you have picked out your favourite pattern and fabric and have (hopefully) made it well so it will get plenty of wear out of it. It is so easy and cheap to buy store bought clothes that we often end up putting it in the charity bag a few years down the line. I don't know about you but I have never felt the need to bin anything I have lovingly made with my own hands.
I have put together a series of tutorials on how to make some plastic alternatives around your home. Most of them will require things that you will already have in your home or in your fabric stash. Links to them all so far are here by just clicking on the images and I will be adding to this over the coming weeks.
Switching from hand wash to soap is easy but its a bit trickier in the shower. I have made us a couple of these pouches to keep our soap in for the shower.
I will no longer be buying multi packs of tissues wrapped in layers of unnecessary plastic. With the help from Who Gives a Crap bamboo tissue paper I will be refilling my tissue pouch instead of pulling out a new packet.
Menstrual Liner
As you will see in the blog, I took some convincing on this one too but this is the best change I ever made. Click onto the full blog to read more about it. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can still make a difference by reducing sanitary products in exchange for reusable ones during the lighter parts of your cycle.
Although not plastic themselves, the usually come in plastic packaging. They also look super pretty on your dressing table and a great scrap busting project.
This bag comes with me everywhere. It is my post run bag and then folds right down to go in my regular bag when I go out. It was our beach bag on holiday too. Say no to a bag!
One of my favourite plastic free swaps is using wax wraps. I bought a few at first to see how I got on and I loved them! The more I got used to using them instead of cling film, the more I found I needed. Learn how to make them here.
These reusable cloths are the simplest reusable project and great for scrap busting. It isn’t until you start looking at the things around you that you realise how much of the things, we use daily, are made of plastic. It was actually the packaging of the sponges that made me question an alternative. I hadn’t even considered that the sponges themselves were made of plastic. I would wash them, but they would always fall apart after only one or two washes. It inspired me to look into alternatives and part of that was creating these cloths.
