BBC journalist goes without plastic

Christine Jeavans will be keeping a blog of her efforts for the next month so readers can discover how living without plastic impacts on her life.

However, Jeavans will keep the plastic that she already owns.

She has already kept a month’s worth of plastic waste, which amounted to 603 items, to use as a barometer for her month of abstinence.

The mother of an 18-month-old son will also be converting to reusable nappies for the duration of August, which could potentially save 120 nappies a month from her household waste.

Jeavans highlighted figures from the Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap) that state that we throw away 58 billion items – 1.5 million tonnes – of household plastic packaging a year and it’s growing by 2-5% annually.

Packaging Federation chief executive Dick Searle warned Jeavans that unless you’re very dedicated “then you’re quite likely to end up throwing more [food] away”.

Jeavans said: “If plastic in general, and plastic packaging in particular, is all about facilitating our current way of living, will I have to return to the labour-intensive shopping patterns of previous decades to complete my non-plastic mission? I’m about to find out.”

Read more about Jeavans here.

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