Day 1, Getting started

Avoiding supermarket plastic is my first challenge today.

My starting point was The Source in Smith St with a bag full of empty tomato jars leftover from making pasta sauce. A great place to buy bulk food items as well as some soaps and cleaners too, that are usually packaged in plastic. Thank god they sell good chocolate, otherwise i'm not going to cope.

They have many stores around Australia, more opening soon.

Note big bag of flour and pyrex storage containers from home so I can get sliced ham and snags from the butcher without getting bags. They were cool about it. Babkas bread, not shown - had to ask for no sticky tape when they wrapped it!

Annoying things today:

• I bought a USB cord for my bike and forgot to think about its packaging - nearly returned it but took it on the chin. It'll be in my sin bin :(

• Even apples from the corner fruiterer have little plastic stickers on them :(

• Made Gia porridge with banana and honey, she said it looked like vomit!

Follow my journey...

I've committed to going plastic free for the month of July... signed up to this, and you can too:
http://www.plasticfreejuly.org

Here I'll post information about specific challenges I face over the course of the month and solutions, as I find them. If you have any comments or tips, please share them with me.

I have already reduced much of the plastic that I used to consume regularly, so the new challenge for me is to take it to the next level... Go beyond banishing the four most common unnecessary plastics: bags, bottles, cups and straws. I'll add to this, plastic cutlery, takeaway containers and supermarket packaging, in fact I'm going to try to avoid as much as I can. At the end of the month, I'll post a picture of every bit of plastic I consume.

This is an experiment for me to see how much change I can make in my own life, prove a little point to myself an perhaps inspire someone else along the way. Hopefully some of these changes will continue for me well past July.

Remember, plastic is built to last forever (800-1000 years!) to use it just once is well... silly.

I want to live in a more sustainable way, to show that can live well, enjoy the riches of modernity and do it all in a low-impact way.

Wish me luck!!
O.