'I tried living plastic-free for a week just to see if it was possible ...'

Australians use 3.92 billion plastic bags a year – and use more than 10 million new bags each day. Rebecca Huntley decided to do her bit for the environment by going for a week without any single use plastic. It was almost impossible – and made her realise plastic now rules pretty much every aspect of our lives.

Day 1

Last Thursday, I woke up to a sea of plastic. Plastic bags containing plastic bags with more little plastic bags inside them. This was a bad start to my attempt to live plastic free for one whole week.

Inspired by the work of the environmental organisation 1 Million Women, I had decided to do Plastic Free July. (I felt like a bit of a shirker, of course, since I was only trying for a week …) The aim of Plastic Free July is simple: don’t use any single use plastic for the whole month.

The sea of plastic bags was my own fault. I’d been asleep when the delivery man had dropped off the week’s groceries. I made a mental note to have old plastic bags ready to hand the delivery man for recycling next time.

I looked at the dog. He was a fluffy poo machine. I made another mental note to google ‘picking up poo without plastic’.

Day 2

I woke up early to see how many dog poos were in the back yard. The hound had had some kind of poo party overnight. There were three. I managed to use sheets of a community newspaper and secured each end with string like a home-made, disgusting Christmas cracker. Yay for me.

I wanted to do more than just not use single use plastic bags. I wanted to minimise plastic bag use entirely; find different ways to do everyday things without plastic. But it was hard. If you aren’t thinking, you can collect plastic almost hourly as you go about your business at work and at play without even realising it.

I had to pack my daughter’s lunch for drama camp. I am the queen of Tupperware and so everything went in little containers. But then I remembered. I had promised, as an end of holiday treat, to order some horrid novelty cookies in tiny plastic bags, something I almost never buy. I closed my eyes and threw one into the lunch bag. Fail.

My seven year old was getting ready for the last day of drama camp and the end-of-week concert performance.

“The teacher says we have to put our costume in a plastic bag.”

Why I asked, can’t we use another non-plastic bag?

“But the teacher SAID.”

It was 7am, the twins were asleep and I wasn’t ready for a fight before my first coffee. I took a breath. “Look the teacher probably didn’t mean a plastic bag, just any old bag.” I explained to her what I was doing, trying not to use plastic for a week. She relented and went to find a canvas bag for her costume. Win.

I went to get her pancakes for breakfast, made a few days before and stored in the fridge with – yes – cling-wrap. I threw the plastic in the rubbish bin. “Mum you are wasting plastic.” Touche.

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That afternoon, after my daughter’s debut performance as ‘superhero tourist number 13’, I took her for a snack before we headed home. I parked and we got takeaway gelato for her, hot chocolate for me. As she made her way through her scoop of mint choc-chip, the little fluorescent orange spoon taunted me: another shiny sign of failure. The disposable cup felt heavy in my hand.

I decided when I got home to use the little spoon to flick the dog poo in the back yard into the disposable coffee cup and then secure the lid, writing ‘do not open’ on it in red texta. Win. Kind of.

Day 3

Off I went to the local organic markets. Still lots of plastic around, but some stalls hand over the veggies nude. I discussed plastic with the café owner. He told me how hard it is to avoid landfill. He gets his vegetable oil delivered in big plastic barrels, stock piles them and pays good money for someone to come and get rid of them.

Once home, I sat down to feed my 9-month old twins. They both eat like rotary hoes. I couldn’t keep up with the demand for solid food with my own cooking so I generally order packs of plastic organic baby food. I spooned some banana and blueberry mush into open mouths and checked to see if I could recycle the packaging. No clue on the packet but I emailed the manufacturer about it.

Day 4

Sunday is quiet, very little running around and shopping, so it is a bit easier to stick to ‘no new plastic’. And yet as I went about my chores in the house, plastic stared at me from every cupboard and shelf. There was no escape!

Day 5

In the afternoon, I picked up my daughter and we headed off to do chores. She was starving, of course, and I had forgotten to bring any food from home, fruit or cut-up cheese and crackers in a Tupperware container. She is a big sushi fan and we were running late to get home and so, yes I got takeaway. I brought the container home to recycle but as I dropped it into the bin I spied the empty soya sauce container and imagined it joining its brothers and sisters in landfill, an enormous school of tiny little plastic fishes swimming in the dirt for 1000 years.

I got depressed. Is it wise to do Plastic Free July at the same time as Dry July?

Day 6

I was getting the hang of this plastic free thing. Everything requires just a dash more time, effort, pre-planning and ingenuity.

For example, I used the paper cover of a toilet roll (from ethnical loo paper makers Who Gives A Crap?) to pick up dog poo and used plastic bands from the sushi container to secure it at both ends like an amaretti biscuit.

Day 7

At the end of my plastic free week, I see the world with slightly different eyes and things have changed. The shopping got delivered again and I had the old plastic bags ready in the kitchen to give the delivery driver to recycle. There were no little plastic bags of cookies in a bigger plastic bag. My daughter protested. I told her we would make chocolate coconut fudge on the weekend instead.

I found my old Keep a Cup and bought another babycino sized one for my daughter. I started carrying a reuseable bag for shopping and a small Tupperware contained for even better plastic bag avoidance.

Plastic is everywhere. But a week going ‘Plastic Free’ has made me change ever so slightly and become more aware of the waste intrinsic in everyday life.

Now for a glass of plastic-free wine.

Have you ever lived plastic free? Let us know in the comments.

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