A Vintage Life - Ways to Avoid Single Use Plastic

One billion elephants! 

Or 8.3 billion tonnes. That's how much plastic has been produced when the plastics industry really took off in the fifties. Of that amount, 9% has been recycled, 12% has been incinerated and the remaining 79%?  Well, you've seen the pictures on TV...

In the fifties, our grandparents reeling from war-time shortages and post-war rationing, kept everything.  (I know that from having taken over a year to clear my mother's house.)  They bought their groceries and meat from small independent shopkeepers who wrapped their purchases in paper.  They sat down to eat at the family table and had two sets of cutlery: one for everyday, one for best. They had tea parties for special occasions with tea-sets and tea-pots and tea leaves. 

They tucked handkerchiefs in sleeves or pockets and gave pretty embroidered sets as presents.  At the same time, they embraced this new extraordinary material which could be used to store food safely and they loved the affordable jewellery that sparkled and gleamed and looked like real thing: amber, pearl, ivory and coral.

A random selection of beads from my mother's jewellery box

Thanks to their careful curation of these precious things, many of them are still around. So can revisiting the past, help us reduce our plastic waste and create own plastic free legacy?  Here's some ideas.

1) Use tea leaves (and tea-pots!)  Almost all teabags contain a plastic sealant, polypropylene, to stop them disintegrating.  Contrary to popular belief, they won't biodegrade in your compost.

J G Meakin Studio teapot and vintage tea caddies

2) Use handkerchiefs.  Tissues are 100% paper but they can't be recycled or flushed away and they come in plastic wrapping (even the boxes).

3) Bring your own cutlery (and napkin) to work.) Each year in the UK we get through 16.5 billion pieces of disposable cutlery and we are among the biggest users of straws on the planet: 42 billion per year.

4) Use soap and shampoo bars and display them on pretty vintage ceramic dishes.  These are Poole, made in the sixties, hand painted, each with their individual maker's mark.

Hand painted Pool pottery from the s 60with vintage soaps

70s Tupperware in various sizes

5) Use Tupperware.  You can take it to your friendly local shopkeeper and producer and avoid plastic bags and food trays. An estimated 2.26 million tonnes of plastic packaging is produced in the UK each year, of which three fifths ends up being dumped)


6) Avoid clingfilm. In the UK we love cling film, 1.2 million metres every year, to be exact; that's an annual 44m per household.  Switch to beeswax wraps.

50s fabric turned into beeswax wraps

Beeswax wraps are a brilliant way to wrap food stuff (although avoid meat) and can be shaped into pockets and boxes. My beeswax wraps are !00% vintage cotton infused with a blend of beeswax, anti-bacterial jojoba oil and pine resin (to make the wraps cling). In future I plan to use beeswax from local beekeepers. 

The wraps can be wiped or rinsed in lukewarm water; they should last at least a year and can be refreshed by putting them into a warm oven for a few minutes.  Once they finally reach their end of life, simply put them in the compost.