Day 22: Plastic: here, there and everywhere

Tonight’s tea was rather unremarkable (jacket potatoes and beans) so my reflections for today are on last night’s dinner: halloumi burgers with slaw. Halloumi is not a staple in our household so I was looking forward to exploring something a bit different. I hadn’t made any specific plans so opted for a last minute quick and easy dinner.

There was a snag though: no buns, no red cabbage, no radishes and no coriander in the house so a quick trip to the little supermarket round the corner was required.

Every single of those ingredients came wrapped in plastic… and it made me realise that if you have no alternative to using a supermarket for your shop, like the vast majority of people, you just cannot escape plastic.

Why would you wrap a red cabbage that has its own natural protection in plastic? But most of us don’t seem to question it; so what will it take for things to change? 

Perhaps we need to start by looking at our shopping habits; for years now we have been making our own bread – my husband makes the most delicious bread rolls so they were very much missed last night! We also buy all our fruit and veg from the greengrocers and none of it comes wrapped in plastic. For a few years we used to put all the fruit and veg in those little thin plastic bags until we realised there really was no need for all these bags so now everything goes loose in the basket except for soft veg like tomatoes and even those end up in a reusable plastic bag.

So even when you think you have good habits, there is still room for improvement. I guess I was only shocked at all the plastic in the supermarket because this is not part of my normal shop and it strikes me this needs to be much more at the forefront of our minds. In that respect, it’s been really interesting reading the blog entries from those who are trying to use less plastic.

Because of the lack of choice, I did end up buying the ingredients, convincing myself that in normal circumstances, I can make this again in a much more sustainable way. And it was delicious so…

…halloumi: yummy, plastic: not fantastic