Plastic Fast Update -- Food

So how´s it going with giving up plastic in 2017???

On the food front, here´s a quick update....

Fruit and Veg -- I already bought all my fruit and veg from the market - so it´s easy to refuse plastic bags and put your purchases straight into my own basket. But I´ve also started buying salad ingredients from the market, rather than the pre-washed and packaged versions from the supermarket.

Marg / Butter / Cream Cheese -- I´m choosing the brands that come wrapped in paper / cardboard rather than the ones in plastic tubs.

Yoghurt / Milk  - I have actually found a company that sells yoghurt in glass pots rather than plastic -although it´s expensive. So instead I´ve got into the hang of making my own yoghurt (using a sample of the expensive kind to get it started). That then brought another dilemma - in how to buy the milk! There is very little dairy industry here in Guatemala, so most milk is imported -in plastic bottles or bags.... in the end I´ve gone back to buying milk powder in bulk. Still not great in terms of food miles but better than the alternatives available here (short of buying my own cow!)

Bread -- I actually don´t eat very much bread - so I would normally buy the loaves that are easy and adaptable for freezing. They come in plastic bags, so I´ve been looking for alternatives. The bakery sells fresh bread, but still wants to put it into a plastic bag for me at the till. The assistant tells me that the bag is biodegradable, trying to convince me. This week I´ve learnt that biodegradable plastic (and oxo-biodegradable) is actually no better for the environment than any other plastic. It means that it will break down and break into fragments at a quicker rate, but it continues to be plastic, whatever size it is..... which means it´s toxic, and always will be toxic. (That also goes for the 'bags for life' sort of plastic bags sold in the UK, which are not able to be recycled.) No thanks. Instead I´ve dug out some cloth bags, which I´ll buy fresh bread with (and in smaller quantities).

Dressings / Sauces - It appears that the raw ingredients for salad dressings (oil, vinegar etc) all come in glass bottle options, whereas the finished product don´t... so I´m making my own. Pasta sauces - I´m buying the glass bottled ones rather than sachets - or making them from scratch.

Baking ingredients -- Flour is great- it always comes in paper bags! I wish that sugar would do the same. Reading some of the websites and blogs talking about zero waste, they all talk about buying in bulk in the sort of supermarkets where you can take your own container and refill. Those don´t exist here, so for now I´m trying to always buy the biggest version, so cutting down on the amount of plastic packaging used - which I can recycle.

Meat - I haven´t really faced this one properly yet. Supermarket meat is always packaged in plastic. Meat from the market or butchers here in Guatemala will give me all sorts of other issues!.... so I´m basically eating less ... which probably isn´t a bad thing anyway!

SO that´s how it is so far on the food front...
Since last time I wrote about personal hygiene products.....I´ve cut down to only wash my hair once or twice a week - using a solid shampoo bar. And this week, I had a first attempt at making my own toothpaste -- really easy! - and so much nicer than the organic bought version I tried.