In which: from small molehills...

A year ago I said my New Year’s Resolution was to reduce my family’s plastic usage and this is a rough estimate of how making some simple changes took nearly 1800 pieces of single-use plastic out of circulation and saved us nearly £200.

Shower gel 100 bottles to 20 bars of soap - saved c.£70
Persil washing liquid 12 bottles & plastic dispensers to 4 large boxes - saved c. £50
Tassimo pods to coffee machine - 1200 pods to 20 bags of freeze dried coffee - saved £200 (argh!)
Plastic premium deodorant to glass bottle deodorant - 12 bottles - saved £24
Plastic orange squash bottles to glass cordial - 52 large bottles - costs gone up a lot (probably around £50 more)
Plastic milk cartons to glass bottle delivery - 135 bottles (cost £17 more)
Not bagging any vegetables or fruit - 240 bags fewer (cost neutral)
Solid shampoo and conditioner - 12 bottles (cost neutral)
Condiments (ketchup) in glass not plastic - 24 bottles (cost neutral)

Plastic reduction 1,787 fewer single-use plastics
Saved £277 (well, actually £177 as the coffee machine to replace the Tassimmo was £100)

There will have been a lot more plastics we avoided too - wherever something came in a lot of plastic (like puddings) we didn’t buy it and swapped Evan from Pot Noodle to tinned snacks like ravioli.

Even if you put all your plastics out to be recycled 93% won’t be - so for us that is 1,661 pieces of plastic that would have ended up dumped in landfill in a country abroad.

This year I’m going to move to buying pasta etc from scoop shops to reduce bags. There’s not much I can do about Quorn mince though - I pretty much live on it and it comes in plastic bags.