Bizcuits | Lessons from #PlasticFreeJuly

Leanda Lee

An MDT Decisive Moment photograph and a letter to the editor in June lead me in a roundabout way to participate in the Plastic Free July Challenge.
Plastic Free July is a global community-based challenge to raise awareness of the volume of plastic rubbish in our lives and eco-systems. By the end of the month over 40,000 people in 90 countries accepted the challenge, whether that be refusing all single-use plastic for the entire month or the Top 4 challenge (plastic bags, drink bottles, take-away cups and straws) for a few days or more.
The ‘plastic free’ part can mislead for it is nigh impossible to renounce all plastics. Replacing valuable durable plastics with something else and throwing them into landfill would defeat the purpose, as energy and resources are already embedded in the product: re-using them is the more sustainable option. The Challenge is about refusing single-use plastic, as globally only 14% is recycled, and here in Asia where we produce 45% of the world’s plastic we contribute 82% of the world’s ocean leakage.
For me, it has now been four weeks of single-minded attention to the packaging that comes with day-to-day household purchases. Apart from fruit and vegetables bought from the green-grocer, each purchase decision came with a problem, a search for a solution, a decision to go without or determine a substitute.
I have not been in Macau during this challenge which friends have told me makes it an easier proposition (although in Macau, the wet-markets have always been a great option). Contrary to expectations though, I have found that bulk foods outlets, cottage dairies and producers are more readily found in urban hipster precincts. I cannot buy the range of pulses, flours, spices, confectionary and dried fruits, peanut-butters or liquid soaps and detergents in my semi-rural environment. I have had to give up on supermarkets, I’ve trained butcher’s assistants how to tare out the weight of my containers and convinced bakeries that a loaf doesn’t need to be sliced, and I’ve found a fromagerie that will pop fresh cheeses straight from their production line into my jars.
I have spent hours Googling so-called organic and health food options to find most use unsustainable packaging. How do you reconcile the terms ‘organic’ and ‘whole-foods’ with plastic packaging? – a sure contradiction. I came across the NGO Oxfam selling each reusable cotton calico shopping bag in, yes, single-use plastic bags.
There have been moments of elation at finding treasures: a gewurzhaus with bulk spices and metal lidded glass jars – it was as if a whole new door of culinary delight had opened. And the milk, this was one of my biggest hurdles as even the cardboard cartons are 20% plastic. The day I found that unassuming third generation Italian cheese-maker who would decant litres of frothy un-homogenised white stuff into my bottles – oh, exquisite small joys.
I’ve learnt to make cheese and continue to make all my own yoghurt (a summer’s day on the balcony in Macau is perfect for yoghurt making, by the way). Toilet paper now arrives wrapped in paper and I started to line rubbish bins with newspaper (not this one). I now visualise rubbish thrown in bins as ‘landfill in transit’ and contemplate each article placed into the recycling bin knowing that 80% of it is destined for landfill, incinerators or the sea.
The hardest lesson has been responding to questions about why I do this. Logic, statistics and arguments about damage to the environment have not been particularly persuasive. A snide “oh, you’re saving the earth, are you?” is not an infrequent response. Simply saying “I’m doing The Challenge, please help me” and tweaking emotions work best. In the end it simply feels good knowing I am not adding so much to the problem. This month’s challenge towards a zero-waste lifestyle has been energising.
There are many people trying to live this way but they are usually like-minded community-based people happily converting the converted. Any real movement towards a restorative and regenerative economy can only happen once there is a values’ shift en masse.