It’s been around 8/9 months since we decided as a family to try to start living with less waste.

As with all things there have been some successes and some failures .

I think the real root of it all is habits. Just changing one little thing at a time and continuing to make those changes day after day , they all add up and become steps towards living a little more mindfully.

Plastic is in the news and plastic is where it started for us but it’s only the tip of a really huge iceberg of problems.

We have mostly started by trying to reduce our use of disposable items , single use convenience products that aren’t just made of plastic. We really need to simply get out of the habit of single use items. Plastic bags, plastic bottles, napkins, coffee cups, disposable cutlery, disposable wipes…just to name a few.

All of these changes are easy and most require nothing more than refusal!

No straw please!

No napkin needed thanks.

Others will need a little bit of organisation but the more you do it , the easier it becomes to remember . We just need to start with the habits.

Carry a reusable bag with you at all times and remember to use it.

Take a reusable cup with you if you often buy takeaway drinks

Carry a straw in your bag (even a reusable plastic straw will be fine , it’s not single use and can be reused for years)

If you are at home, use a cosy wet face cloth instead of baby wipes for hands and faces , use a cloth to wipe down kitchen surfaces instead of disposable wipes.

Pop your /your child’s lunchtime sandwich into a tub instead of cling film/food bag

refill a juice/water bottle instead of using a new one each day.

Just by adopting these easy habits , how many disposable items can one person avoid each week?. Multiply that by the number of people in your home and you can see how quickly you can eliminate a good number of disposable products without having to spend any money or really change much about your day to day living .

I think for my first post on this subject this is probably a good place for me to finish up and put together a wee series of the bite size steps we have taken on our journey so far and the areas that I feel we need to try harder ☺️