Why I continue to count my household plastic

Guest blog from Lindsey @Frugal_Quaker

As a household of two adult women who are trying to live a more simple life, my wife and I were very excited to do The Big Plastic Count! For years now, we have been reducing our waste, but over time we have sought new challenges so we don’t get complacent. 

We have replaced our standard-size wheelie bins with the smallest versions the local council offers (a quick phone call or email sorts out delivery of new bins), and this has been a good incentive to keep our waste low. Four years on and we only put our bins out every 4-8 weeks because we strive to create less waste. 

The week of counting for us was just the start – we got to the end of the challenge and because we were learning so much, we both wanted to continue. What was surprising to us was that we believed we were good at recycling and had drastically reduced our waste. It turns out there is much more to do!

It revealed that snack wrappers are a big problem for us! We have been making alternative snacks, baking our own bread and growing some vegetables to get our plastic down. We reuse many pieces of single-use plastic – yoghurt pots and food trays are great in the garden! It has also highlighted the number of brands marketed as healthy that do not display any recycling information on their packaging.

We are still a long way from being zero waste – but it is our goal. In the meantime keeping a running tally on plastic waste is a huge motivator to reduce it even further. We have been counting for 20 weeks now and our tally has gone from 50 pieces to 37 pieces. I’m now doing monthly updates on our progress @Frugal_Quaker.

Keep doing what you can to reduce plastic, let's be the change we want to see in the world!

Lindsey