5 Plastic Free Hacks: October

Stuck in a relationship with plastic? Here are this month’s simple plastic free hacks to implement into your daily life.

1. Take your reusable coffee cup and water bottle with you whenever you leave the house. ​The Packaging Forum estimates that 295 million plastic cups and bottles hit landfills every year, and when they disintegrate in landfill, they create the greenhouse gas known as methane.

2. When cleaning up around the house, avoid cloths that are filled with microfibres and instead use sponges or cloths made of more natural materials like bamboo, hemp or cotton. Microfibres account for about a third of the plastic in the world’s oceans and have been found in some of the planet’s most remote waters.

3. The bathroom is an amazing place to get rid of plastic. Save plastic by buying shampoos, conditioners, soaps, body washes, deodorant and even toothpaste in paper packaging (or solid beauty bars), tins or glass jars. Instead of using plastic toothbrushes all the time, think about investing in a bamboo toothbrush.

4. If the above bathroom hacks feels like a bit too much for you, think about getting a reusable pump for your liquids and buying each product in bulk rather than a new plastic bottle each time you run out.

5. Scrap plastic straws from your life altogether. This might mean notifying the café or restaurant worker that you don’t want a straw with your drink. Plastic straws take years upon years to break down and are unnecessary. Drink straight out of the cup, or if that’s not your jam, invest in a reusable glass or stainless steel straw.

Going plastic-free isn’t necessarily easy, and everyone is at their own stage in the journey. Picking up these habits bit by bit and making small changes that evolve into habits will make a massive difference on the plastic output from your house, and will likely save you a whole lot of money in the long run.