What can we do in #PlasticfreeJuly

Social media campaigns are very popular ways of spreading the vegan message, from #veganuary to #meatfreemay. In 2018, Brandwatch said that #vegan was the most common social media hashtag and was posted by 54% of “foodie influencers”. Now, I’m not setting out to be an influencer, whatever that means, by any stretch of the imagination. I just want to spread the vegan message and help fellow English-speaking vegans in France. However, even an oldie like me needs to keep on top of the current zeitgeist. So, it was, as July came around (far too quickly for my liking), that I noticed everyone who was anyone had started using #plasticfreeJuly.

Photo from Pixabay

Apart from Donald Trump and a few climate change deniers, we all know that the oceans are full of plastic and the planet is in serious danger. If one of your motivations is becoming #veganfortheenvironment  (see, another hashtag), then sometimes it seems that the problem is so great that there’s little a single household can do to ameliorate the situation. But, of course, if everyone thinks (and acts) like this then nothing will get done. Remember: the journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.

The good news is that things are starting to happen; we just have to hope that it isn’t too little, too late. There’s a great website been setup by some good guys down in Australia. Check it out: www.plasticfreejuly.com It’s full of great things you can do to reduce your use of plastic. So, I set out to see what we could do here in our little corner of France to contribute to #plasticfreeJuly. Here are the first six steps I looked at:

1. Ditch the takeaway coffee – no chance of a takeaway coffee round here, lol.

2. Use reusable shopping bags, not plastic carriers – single use plastic carriers have been banned from supermarket checkouts since March 2016. We’ve got a good stock of ‘bags for life’ from various supermarkets in the car and the camper, so we’re covered on that front.

3. Don’t use plastic straws – I don’t think I’ve ever bought a plastic straw in my life and we certainly don’t drink the type of drinks that necessitate them, so another tick.

4. Don’t buy or use plastic water bottles – we did used to buy a lot of bottled water, as many people do in France. However, we stopped a couple of years ago except for campervan emergencies. For example, when the water in the fresh water tank is old or of dubious origin; however, on our last trip to Scandinavia I refilled bottles at taps and we did not buy any bottled water. Initially we had a filter jug in the house, but now I just drink tap water. It’s quite safe here. 

5. Buy loose fruit and veg – all the shops now offer paper or compostable bags, which we use if  we’re buying a quantity that needs to be weighed. Recently, I’ve saved some instead of recycling so I plan to take them back next week or investigate the cotton bags you can buy at the Biocoop.

 6. Teabags – this, I discovered, was somewhere that we needed to take immediate action.

Unlike most Brits, we don’t drink black tea. I know many people that even bring their favourite PG Tips or Yorkshire Tea over from the UK, but I can’t stand the stuff. For years, we have drunk herbal or green tea, or as the French call them tisanes. I’d never really given tea a second thought, after all it’s vegan, right? Er, not always. My favourite tea is the Yogi brand, and thankfully that is 100% vegan and carries the Vegan Society sunflower mark. But some other teas are not vegan: flavours like camomile and honey are obviously not, but apparently even some other flavours, especially chai, may contain butter esters and other dairy residues.

But what suddenly struck me, in relation to #plasticfreeJuly was the packaging. We’d run out of one of favourite Yogi teas and I happened to pick up a box of Elephant tea in the supermarket. I’m afraid I was wooed by the pastel shades of the box and the ‘Zen’ branding, but it’s still Unilever. I removed the plastic outer wrapper – in the bin; then I undid the box – pyramid teabags made of plastic. I would never have bought these intentionally as they don’t compost down and can even be made of silk. It brought home to us just the unnecessary amount of packaging involved with tisanes. Even our favourite Yogi brand has individually wrapped tea bags inside a cardboard box, except for a couple of flavours you can thankfully buy loose. At that moment we made the decision to dust off the teapot and make a permanent switch to loose tea. Mr VV even spent half an hour cutting open the pyramids and emptying the contents into a glass jar 😊