Today I finally made home-made baby wipes. The pressure of winning at Plastic Free July has powered me through three months of procrastination to do what turned out to be a 10 minute job.
I cut up an old towel, put the squares in an old ice-cream tub with warm water, olive oil and baby wash and that’s it!
Since having Joni four years ago, we’ve used baby wipes every single day. When Evan was born and before Joni was potty trained, we were wiping both kids’ bums with baby wipes, at least eight times a day in Evan’s case. That’s a lot of poop and a lot of wipes.
Today we’ve gone for a full 12 hours without using a baby wipe. I feel a bit ridiculous getting excited about this. It’s not going to resolve climate change, but it’s major achievement in a house with two kids.
After a great start, day four of plastic free living got even better. We went to Pausa cafe at Dunelm Mill for dinner and as it was hot, I didn’t get my usual chai latte with soya milk (yes, yes, I know it’s an eye-roller) and wanted a smoothie.
My new found plastic free confidence meant that I asked for a smoothie in a glass instead of plastic. Again, to many people I can imagine this would barely make a memory, let alone be something worth writing about. However, I’m an introvert who hates asking for anything, but two minutes later I had an banana and strawberry smoothie in front of me in a glass with a biodegradable straw.
The waitress also informed me that all their takeaway containers are biodegradable too. Pausa, you’ve come a long way since the plastic cutlery incident last year.
After dinner we headed to Sainsbury’s where my plastic free victories abruptly stopped.
This was my first attempt at the ‘big shop’ in July and I know it would be tough. But Sainsbury’s really really love plastic.
Never have so many pieces of fruit and vegetables been covered in so much plastic. I tried to avoid it as much as possible but it’s not easy. We’re a family of four with Nana staying at the moment so unless we decided to starve, some plastic had to go in the trolly.
I managed to avoid most of the plastic wrapped fruit and veg apart from a cucumber. But there were quite a few other items that made it home and ruined my attempts at being plastic free. Breakfast cereal, nappies, vegan butter and raisins were the main culprits, as well as a swimming cossie for Evan. It’s definitely plastic but it’s definitely not single use (or hopefully not, unless he hates it!), so what’s the deal with that?
As I suspected, supermarkets are going to be the low point of July as I’m going to be pretty much forced into buying things in plastic.