Stuart Heritage, 37

No man is an island. However, if I were an island, I’d probably be the best one ever. When the Guardian asked me to record all the single-use plastic I got through in a week, I scoffed. Piece of cake, I thought.

I work from home, so I never use coffee shop cups. I have a reusable metal water bottle that I carry around in lieu of disposable plastic ones. I make my own soup for lunch each week and store it in reusable pouches. I get most of my meat from the independent butcher down the road. If it wasn’t for my reliance on gelatinous stock pots when I’m cooking, I’d barely use any single-use plastic at all. What an island I’d be. The greatest.

But I’m not an island. I have a wife and two kids under the age of three. My wife has a fiendish sparkling water habit and gets through several two-litre bottles a week. My toddler is an unquenchable soft-fruit fanatic and ploughs through punnets of berries like they’re going out of fashion. And the number of nappies we get through is astonishing. Conservatively, I’d say we use about 60 a week (the two-year-old is potty training), but the five-month-old has been poorly lately so, frankly, all bets are off.

“You know, if Henry VIII had worn disposable nappies, they’d still be in a landfill now,” says Rachelle Strauss of Zero Waste Week, an organisation that encourages households and businesses to produce less waste. She has kindly agreed to be my guru for the week. And, while this did make me briefly entertain the idea of Jurassic Parking a new Henry VIII out of his ancient bum DNA, the permanence shocked me. Three billion nappies are sold in the UK every year, and they’re all getting lobbed into holes.

Pick your battles. What are the things that make you think, ‘OK, I can do without that’

Strauss is brilliantly unmilitant about waste reduction. Her journey began with the simple step of not using single-use carriers at the supermarket and, step by step, she’s slowly reduced her household waste to the point where she hasn’t needed to have her bin emptied for six months.

“This is all about compromise,” she told me. “Pick your battles. What are the things that make you think, ‘OK, I can do without that’? But there will also be things where you think, ‘This is the 21st century and I’m not going to give that up.’ And that’s OK. I’d rather everyone just gave up 50% of their waste, because the collective impact of that is so much more than one family going to crazy lengths.”

Which was heartening, but there was still the nappies issue. Strauss had suggested not giving up disposable nappies entirely – they’re useful in an emergency – but, in order to cut down, I ordered some washable alternatives online and texted my wife to tell her.

She texted back the emoji of a guy with crosses for eyes. To be fair, it’s much nicer to be able to sling away a smelly nappy without much thought, but the new generation of reusables do make it easier. There are waterproof wraps with washable, absorbent bamboo inserts, so it’s all much more civilised than it used to be. It’s cheaper, too. A birth to potty reusable nappy kit is about £200, plus laundry costs of about £100. Disposables are much more expensive – even using the best bulk deals available, we spend £250 a year per kid on nappies, plus probably another £75 on wipes. And the baby doesn’t seem to notice the new setup, so everyone’s happy.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Stuart Heritage’s week: 7 2l bottles of sparkling water, 3 1l bottles of still water, 1 Fruit Shoot, 1 Mini Babybel string bag, 2 medication blister packs, 1 fruit cup, 4 berry trays, 3 meat trays, 2 salad tubs, 1 fork, 1 spoon, 1 Choco Leibniz insert tray, 4 stock pots, 1 bubblewrap-lined envelope, many, many nappies. Photograph: Liz McBurney/The Guardian

When I told Strauss how much space was taken up with two-litre water bottles, she was surprisingly sympathetic. “That’s a prime example of where compromise comes in, because it’s not fair on her to go without.” So what should I do? “I would go back to the 1970s and think about getting a SodaStream. They’re still around, and they still fart when you press the button. You’ll save loads of money, and they just use tap water, so there’ll be no waste.”

So to make amends for the added strife of reusable nappies, I bought my wife a SodaStream Fizzi. Even though it was the cheapest model, it still cost £70, the equivalent of 700 litres of bottled water. There are cheaper brands, like Limo Bar, or Olympia, but even with SodaStream’s gas exchange programme – you send them your empty CO 2 cylinder and they fill it for free – it’s easy to see how the outlay would put people off. But then I imagined 350 empty bottles in a landfill, jostling next to all that theoretical medieval poo.

Next came the part I was dreading most. Although I try to buy as much meat as I can from a butcher, he still uses a lot of plastic to wrap and pack his meat. That wouldn’t do, but Strauss advised me to take my own container.

This was a problem, because I’ve spent months carefully fostering a relationship with my butcher. I’ve put more effort into him than I have with some girlfriends. It’s got to the point where he calls my oldest son Mr Sausage. The kids get free sweets when we visit, and I get free pork pies. Environment be damned; I didn’t want to derail my free pie ticket with a weird request for him to put my chops in some Tupperware. But I did it nevertheless, and guess what? He didn’t bat an eyelid.

In all honesty, once you start paying attention to the waste you create, it’s easy to trim it back. In just a week we’ve made a nappy dent, massively cut back on plastic bags and got rid of plastic water bottles altogether. We still create waste, but by the end of the experiment, for the first time since our kids were born, I didn’t have to elbow-drop my bin bags to fit them into the dustbin. As Strauss suggested, once the simple steps we started with become habits, we’ll begin to cut down elsewhere. But you can prise those fancy gravy pods from my cold dead hands.

Zoë Daniel, 19



Facebook Twitter Pinterest A week of plastic used by student Zoë Daniel: 3 bin bags, bubble wrap, 1 bottle label, 1 makeup brush package, cutlery, tissue wrappers, 3 cups, 6 crisp packets, 3 chocolate wrappers, 1 Amazon package, 1 packaging from false nails, 2 contact lens packaging, 1 2l bottle, 4 Asos packages, 1 micellar water bottle, 2 bottle tops, 1 cotton pads packet. Photograph: Liz McBurney/The Guardian

I start my plastic diary on day one of “refreshers” week (the first week of the second term) and wake up very hungover and thirsty, craving a smoothie. I walk to the shops, remembering to bring my own reusable bag; later I rinse the large bottle and put it in the recycling. For dinner, my flatmates and I go to Yo! Sushi, where the chopsticks are packaged in plastic. On our way home, we still feel peckish, so go to Burger King for brownies, eating them with plastic spoons.

Before going to bed I wash my face with micellar water (which comes in a plastic bottle), use an interdental tooth brush (plastic), and take out my monthly contacts (plastic). I’ve barely done anything today, but the pile in the corner of the kitchen is getting bigger. On day two, the plastic onslaught continues; now I’m looking for it, I see it everywhere. Thanks to a cold, I go through multiple plastic-wrapped packets of tissues. A pizza delivery arrives with unnecessary plastic cutlery and a plastic-wrapped chocolate bar. I get my (acrylic) nails done, receive some clothes from Asos which come in plastic packaging, as does the ink for my printer.

A late-night McDonald’s comes with dips in disposable plastic tubs, as well as my plastic-lined drink cup with its plastic lid and straw. My bathroom is where a lot of the plastic action happens: cotton balls and toilet rolls in plastic packaging, makeup in plastic tubes, shower gel and shampoo, too. The kitchen is the other culprit: for dinner, I make a big batch of chicken bake and am left with plastic packaging from the chicken breasts, the plastic pouch from the sauce and the film on the container of mushrooms.

Five days in and I’m amazed to realise how much I have accrued, from the Amazon delivery which arrives wrapped in bubbles and film, to the balloons we blow up for my flatmate’s birthday (latex, not plastic, but very much single use). The morning after her party, the flat is full of plastic cups, straws and bottles; soon thrown away in several plastic bin bags. I need some help; I speak to Andrew Pankhurst, a consumer campaigns manager from Zero Waste Scotland. He takes a look at my diary and has a few tips, from sharing printer cartridges with flatmates to putting a recycling bin in the bathroom. Could I possibly remove plastic from my everyday life?

I start well, heading to the gym with a reusable thick plastic water bottle. On Pankhurst’s advice, I swap the individual packets of tissues for toilet roll, which I kept in a pouch in my bag – this is fine, though I think a cardboard box of tissues would be neater. At dinner, my friends and I decline the plastic cutlery, straws and sauce sachets. Easy, though to save my lipstick in future I think I’ll invest in a metal straw.

I gather up the plastic film packaging I’ve gathered from all the deliveries and take it to the supermarket; many major recycling points now collect plastic film. (Pankhurst also recommends checking if your local authority recycles Tetra Paks, as many now do).



On bin collection day, I start gathering rubbish and then remember Pankhurst’s advice: “You don’t actually need to use bin bags – I don’t. The only stuff that goes in my main bin is unrecyclable plastic, as I separate food waste, plastic, glass, paper and card into my recycling bins, so there’s no need for a bin bag in the main kitchen bin as there’s nothing dirty or horrible in there. I empty my kitchen bin straight in to the outside wheelie bin.” Sounds good, though I live in a shared flat and my flatmates may take some convincing.

I start storing leftovers in jars (like my mum does, washing out an old pesto pot and using it and other similar jars in place of Tupperware). Instead of buying a multipack of crisps, I decide to try making my own, slicing and seasoning them before baking them in the oven for 15 minutes. Not too bad, though quite a bit more time-intensive than popping to the shops.

When I order a takeaway, I add a note to the order via the app we use, saying that we won’t need any sauce, cutlery and straws. Sure enough, when it arrives, we have no unnecessary plastic items and just what we need: pizza.

Not only have I cut plastic right back, but my friends have been inspired to do the same; our household consumption is much better, the recycling boxes are full and the bin less so. The best change comes when I start coming home for lunch in between my classes instead of buying food on campus. This not only reduces my plastic usage, but saves me money – and I even manage to fit in a nap. I could get used to this.

Ian Jack, 73

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ian Jack’s week: 6 takeaway containers and lids, 1 fruit punnet, 2 hummus pots, 2 salad pots, 1 milk carton, 1 carton floor cleaner, 1 fruit net, several cellophane wrappers, 1 biscuit tray, 2 bags, 1 bottle top, 1 polybag, miscellaneous packaging. Photograph: Liz McBurney/The Guardian

I was born in the age of tin, glass, paper and jute. Beans, peaches and shoe polish came into our home encased in tin cans; jam, lemonade and Hydes’ Anvil Ales in glass jars and bottles; sausages, custard slices and haddock in paper wrappings and bags; coal in jute sacks. Some items – potatoes, for instance – went into mum’s shopping bag without any protection at all and left behind the soil and dust of the fields. Some required cardboard – I am thinking of Barratt’s Sherbet Fountains and St Bruno pipe tobacco.

And then plastic arrived.

My first memory of plastic is a toy I was given as a present around 1950 and which, astonishingly, I still possess

Other than the Bakelite knobs on the radio set, my first memory of plastic is a plaything I was given as a birthday or Christmas present somewhere around 1950 and which, astonishingly, I still possess. A little plastic Mexican (you can tell by the hat) sits on a little plastic mule – white mule, pink rider – with his arms outstretched to hold reins that have gone missing or were never there in the first place. The pink Mexican and his steed were alone in their plasticness when I set out my lead soldiers for their battles on the carpet and had to be given separate roles – scouting forays on the settee, say – to make the difference less obvious. It may be that my parents, seeing that I was fond of this combo, kept them safe in a drawer for me to inherit when both of them were gone. Or, just possibly, it may be that they thought plastic toys were a novelty that would never replace toys made of tin and lead, and would one day be rare and valuable.

Alas, for me and for the world, things didn’t work out like that. From Greenland’s icy mountains, from India’s coral strand – to borrow from a hymn I associate with those faraway times – discarded plastic litters the world and threatens the future of its rivers, lakes and oceans, and all that lives in them.

Thanks mainly to my wife, a tireless campaigner on this front for more than 20 years, we try as a family to do our best by the environment. Our milk comes to the doorstop in returnable glass bottles, we refill old containers with washing-up liquid and laundry detergent at a nearby store, and as far as we can, we buy fruit, veg, bread and cheese from local independent shops that use brown paper bags rather than packaging. We take our own bags with us wherever we go and rarely need to acquire plastic ones. We eat very little meat – which tends to use more plastic than veg to keep it safe and healthy – and some of us (not me, so far) take reusable hot drinks cups in our bags wherever we go. We never buy water in plastic bottles.

Oh, how noble we feel! And yet, as we discovered when we tracked our usage, we still generate a dismaying amount of plastic every week. We kept everything in a box in the basement. The pile would be much smaller if we hadn’t succumbed to a frequent weakness for a takeaway Vietnamese supper from a local restaurant that has recently abandoned containers made of tin foil and cardboard. And smaller still if we had given up salads for one from a minimarket in the high street – portion control rather than taste is the attraction here – and the occasional tub of hummus or box of falafels. But there surely comes a point when no further reductions can be made. Shampoo, toothpaste, bleach: all kinds of personal and household cleaners come in plastic bottles and we aren’t about to stop buying them.

Could we do more? My wife sometimes makes stocks of hummus and I buy far fewer pots of salads than I used to, intending (though I’ve never actually done it) to make in one go enough three-bean salad to last a week. We promise to stop takeaways and eat in the restaurant instead; it’s only round the corner. We shall try, wherever possible, to buy glass, tin or paper alternatives.

We’re lucky. We live in a prosperous part of London that has independent shops, and we can afford to use them. Cutting down on plastic is harder when your only choice of shopping is between a supermarket and an online catalogue. The truth is that a little money can make virtuous living a lot easier.

Coco Khan, 29

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Coco Khan’s week: 3 drinks bottles, 1 grapes punnet, 4 takeaway containers, 1 detergent bottle, 4 contact lens cases, 1 painkiller packet, 2 carrier bags, 1 pack of cashews, 1 pack of pasta, 1 deli wrapper, 4 chocolate wrappers, 1 cheese wrapper, 12 miscellaneous packaging items. Photograph: Liz McBurney/The Guardian

I knew when I started this challenge that it would be impossible to eliminate all the single-use plastic from my life. But I hoped I might get close. I’d found the eco tweaks I made a few years ago painless. I stopped using straws – metal, paper or plastic. (After all, what’s wrong with the humble cup? It’s a design classic). I bought a reusable water bottle, which I’ve never lost despite being a chronic misplacer, and I often carry my own cutlery (there is nothing like the expression on a bouncer’s face when they search your bag and pull out a fork). On the makeup front, I reduced my daily routine to coconut oil and eyeliner pencil (the harder plastic that makeup is packaged in is especially difficult to break down in landfill). And in the kitchen I’ve nearly blinded three housemates by stacking up takeaway boxes for potential reuse so precariously high that an innocent rummage for a salt shaker is a reckoning with gravity.

I was frustrated by food packaged in perfectly good recycled paper, only to be ruined by a plastic window pane

Those amends to my life were a doddle and made my existence easier, so I was optimistic about continuing the journey. I started by noting my single-use plastic consumption. Thanks to smug friends and colleagues gleefully piping up with “Did you remember to include xyz?”, I learned that my clothes were a bit plastic (polyester, microfibre and fleece all contain plastic fibres); that even the foil-looking bags for crisps and nuts are plastic; and, worst of all, teabags also count (they use it to seal the bags ). My optimism quickly disappeared. I found myself frustrated by the sight of food packaged in perfectly good recycled paper, only to be ruined by a plastic window pane (presumably because you might think the label is lying?).

Payday arrived in the middle of my week logging plastic use, and I was surprised to realise that having less money made me consume less plastic. When I’m watching the pennies, I eat more homecooked meals. When I’d been paid, I found myself much more likely to reach for the takeaway menu, to spend money on lunchtime meal deals and deli counter pleasures all served in plastic bags.

But I still felt frustrated by the constant dodges I was having to make to avoid plastic in my daily life. Luckily I was given a pep talk by plastics campaigner Lizzie Carr. In 2016, Carr became the first person to paddleboard the length of England, on what she called a “plastic patrol”, a one-woman crusade to highlight the impact of plastic on the UK’s waterways. Carr took up paddleboarding on the Isles of Scilly in 2013 when recuperating from a cancer diagnosis. When she moved back to London and attempted to paddleboard on the city’s canals, she found them to be “disgusting”, filled with plastic waste.

“That was the start of everything for me,” she told me. “The waterways and paddleboarding had been a way to restore my health, it was where I went to get better. And yet, I was among all of this trash, the waterways coated in rubbish.”

She decided to take photos of every piece of plastic she saw, logging it on a map. Last year, she launched an app so people could contribute. She advises me to look for easy wins, and to consider switching to a glass milk bottle. “If you can organise a milkman you can get glass bottles with a foil top, but if not, many supermarkets sell milk in a glass bottle. These little changes all add up.”

Later that evening I decide to put some of Carr’s other tips to the test. She recommends places that sell produce loose and in bulk so you can bring your own containers and fill up, but recognises these may not be an option for people outside major cities. I take a plastic box and foil to my local supermarket and head for the cheese counter. I’m surprised by how accommodating they are. The cheese is wrapped in the foil, the sticker showing the price stuck on top for checkout, bish bash bosh. My local independent butcher doesn’t mind me popping a couple of chicken breasts in my own Tupperware, and in my local grocery store I even get a freebie out of it (“the scotch egg is on me,” says the friendly assistant).

At the time of writing, I still haven’t finished things like my liquid handwash, which I will replace with regular soap, my washing machine detergent, which I will replace with powder that comes in a box, and fairy liquid which I will switch to Ecover (it’s plastic, but is refillable and doesn’t put harsh chemicals into the water system). The number of changes I could make are exhausting, but Carr’s energy has rubbed off on me.. Besides, there are few things more motivating than out-smugging your friend: “I see your reusable bag, and I raise you a bamboo toothbrush.”

How to cut plastic out of your life



Out and about

Swap clingfilm for reusable waxed paper – BeeBee Wraps makes beeswax-coated cotton as a sustainable food preserving wrap and cover.



Carry cutlery in your bag, and consider keeping a plate, bowl, glass and utensils at work.



If you like using straws, invest in a stainless steel one (Klean Kanteen sell a pack of four for £11).



Be prepared: carry a reusable bag, cup or bottle.



Take your own containers to the shops for meat, cheese or foods from the deli.



Buy fresh bread sold in paper bags (or no bag).



Many supermarkets have paper bags near the fruit or bread; use them for the vegetables, too.



Save glass jars and bottles for purchasing bulk foods and storing leftovers.



If you don’t have a bulk-buy shop near you, use an online one, such as Suma or Infinity Foods.



Use a handkerchief instead of packets of tissues.



At home

Sources: Lizzie Carr, plasticpatrol.co.uk; Marine Conservation Society, mcsuk.org; Wildlife Conservation Society, wcs.org/get-involved/plastics-challenge; myplasticfreelife.com; zerowastescotland.org.uk; friendsoftheearth.uk.

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