Does anyone else encounter this problem of make up on your f...
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Does anyone else encounter this problem of make up on your face cloths?
I provide makeup remover and organic pads and per...
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Hello everyone,
With regular stories in the news referring to plastic in our oceans, it does feel that there is more talk than ever on wanting to address these issues. As part of this, recycling comes up a lot, but even more so there is a need to have more of a reusable (circular) idea about the product that we use. However, as an individual how easy is it to reduce our consumption?
With this in mind, if you had to go plastic free, or look to reduce the amount of plastic you throw away, do you think you would be able to do this? Perhaps you are doing this at the moment?
It would be great to discuss and hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks,
Lizzie
I'm so happy I found this thread!
My wife and I have worked for over a year to create an Airbnb listing that is entirely free of single use plastic waste. Everything we buy is either via a bulk refill method or using some other kind of packaging, right down to our own supply chain. It's been a huge project for us and we've chipped away at it over months, item by item, working to eliminate the single use plastic from our lives and our Airbnb.
My wife is an accountant so we also tracked our changes, step by step, to calculate the overall cost of the changes we made. Overall the changes we made ended up saving us $3860 in annual costs, for everything from bread to toilet paper. We were stunned and very pleased with the result.
For our Airbnb, here are some of the changes we made:
- Making our own bread - we eliminated all the plastic bread bags by buying a high quality bread maker and making it ourselves. We put a loaf of hand sliced bread into our Airbnb pantry for our guests, made fresh that morning (our bread maker has a delay timer). Ordering bulk flour, sugar, and yeast that come in large heavy duty paper bags. We calculated the cost of each loaf, including electricity and depreciation of the metal breadmaker at NZ $0.89 per loaf. Prior to this we were paying NZD $3.50 for the same amount of bread, with the plastic. We get comments from almost every guest at how lovely the homemade bread is.
- Little glass jars with food in them - we buy all our guest pantry items in bulk at the 'fill your own container' places in our city, or else we buy them in big glass jars or metal tins at the bulk store. We then restock little glass jars in the Airbnb with enough for each stay (larger jars for longer stays, little ones for short stays). This includes peanut butter, honey, jam, marmite, breakfast berries, cereals and museli, coffee, sugar and tea bags. From the bulk buying and reducing waste (by not giving them the entire jar to pollute with a dirty knife!) we have saved a massive amount.
- Milk in glass bottle - we refill our own glass containers at the farmers market every Sunday, who supply farm fresh country whole milk (great for making home made mascarpone and mozzarella cheese!). We don't save money on this one compared to cheap plastic bottled milk in the supermarket but it's almost the same price. You can't compare the quality though, we're getting Farm fresh pasteurised Whole Milk that tastes like it came from an actual cow... not the watered down rubbish the supermarkets sell. People have commented how amazing the milk is.
- Cleanning & toiletries - we have refillable pump bottles in our Airbnb for everything from hand soap, to shampoo and conditioner, to laundry liquid. Everything that goes into them comes from the on-tap bulk fill station at our local Commonsense organics or Bin Inn bulk store. This applies even to the cleaning products used in cleaning the Airbnb.
- Toilet paper - this can be a hard one to solve, but we were lucky to find we could order a massive box of naked toilet paper (no plastic) from Greencane NZ. They ship it in a box that is made from 100% recycled paper, plus there is no plastic anywhere outside or inside the box. It works out 23% cheaper to buy toilet paper this way, plus it's not made of virgin tree fibres, it's made from sustainable bamboo fibre.
- Soap - We buy cardboard boxed Ecostore soap and cut it up into little portions, then hand wrap it in recycled paper, with hemp string and a bit of sea shell tied on the outside. We find that people only use 1/4 of a bar you see, so giving them a whole bar to part use then throw away was not only costly but wasteful. We've therefore saved money and waste by making this change. People have commented what a nice personal touch it is to see the hand wrapped soap.
- Water - I'm sorry to say, we used to buy individual plastic bottles of water. It's actually quite scary to look back and admit that now. We have moved now to buying bulk spring water, which is even cheaper and avoids plastic. I'm now using the old plastic bottles from what we used to use as plant pots and have several potato plants growing in them... never seen such healthy potatoes.
- Market fruit - for some reason most of the fresh fruit in supermarkets where we live comes in plastic containers or bags. We switched to buying all our personal vegetables and fruit, as well as Airbnb fruit, at the farmers market on Sunday's. This cut out the plastic entirely and reduced the price of our vegetable and fruit spend by 60% (that's how overpriced things were).
- Tote bags - we provide little tote bags for grocery shopping to our guests, which are made of old fashioned sacking material. They look like something out of the 1700's and have little labels on like "onions" and "potatoes" as well as a large one with a handle for other things. It keeps the theme going of no plastic, even though we haven't directly pointed it out.
- Fully compostable bin liners - we found some that aren't even made of plastic matter, they are made from some kind of fruit fiber. Actually these turned out to be cheaper than our regular plastic bin liners.
So far we're getting great reactions from guests as, along with all the furniture made from recycled wood and drift wood, people can see the theme. We don't push it at people or emphasise that our listing is plastic free, but we're enjoying the exercise for ourselves.
It was quite a challenge to work out how to offer dairy items to guests, who expect it (and don't like when you try to offer vegan alternatives!), when we don't do the dairy thing ourselves. But for a pair of amateurs, my wife and I have done the best we can and found plastic free options for everything we currently offer. We're always looking for ways to improve too, so it's an ongoing project 🙂
Hi @Joan157 - I'll see if I can help:
The bin liners we use are called EcoPack. They are made from natural corn starch; plastic free, biodegradale, etc. We get them in 2 sizes; 27L and 36L, but they come in loads of sizes.. even 80L. They are made by a New Zealand company, but you could try contacting them. The manufacturer is Ecopack (https://www.ecopack.co.nz) but you can buy them from the retailer Ecobags (https://ecobags.co.nz). Not sure if they will ship them internationally but I'm sure you could contact them and find a way.
The best thing to do for jam is buy it in glass jars then, for guests, drop a few spoonfuls into a smaller jelly jar. The quilted mini jelly jars are the best looking for jam, as it makes it look homemade. The ones pictured below are about the right size.
These cost me about NZD $3 per jar, including the lids. They hold about 3 good tablespoonfuls of jam. We also use them for peanut butter, honey, marmite... it looks pretty when they all match. Plus, if someone pollutes the jar with a buttery knife you don't have to throw away the entire thing. I wash out the jars and refill them for each guest. I try to save the contents but not if it isn't super clean looking. Plus if young children stayed, I just go right ahead and assume fingers have been in those jars lol. I also found it faster to have a second set of them ready to do a quick swap out on turnover days.
Here is how the whole set of jars look, with the jam in the fridge, and the others on the pantry shelf. All of them work on the same principle: we buy plastic free and serve plastic free.
