DAIRY
THREE BILLION PLASTIC BOTTLES OF MILK ARE BOUGHT EACH YEAR IN THE UK
That’s a LOT of plastic! Back to my thing about tackling the things we buy most often first, kitchen staples, like milk, are an obvious place to start.
milk
This is both difficult and easy.
Difficult, because I don’t think you’ll find milk in anything other than plastic in the supermarket.
Easy, because you can get it delivered in glass by Milk & More. It’s more expensive, for sure. But just think of all those plastic bottles that won’t be on your watch.
While you’re at it, search by ‘plastic alternatives’ on the site, and you’ll find there are lots of other good things that they can leave on your doorstep - juices, granola, yogurt - things that are tricky to get without plastic elsewhere.
butter
(Sorry for the greasy picture.)
This is the only butter I’ve seen anywhere that’s not wrapped in a plastic/paper/foil composite, which is never recyclable (although if you’re keen, apparently you can soak the wrapper and the films come apart and it can be dealt with that way). I found it in Dugard and Daughters in Herne Hill, but it looks like it’s stocked in a few other places too.
The other option is to use ghee, which you can find in glass jars. Ghee is clarified butter, often used in Indian cooking and revered in Ayurvedic medicine. I’m not sure whether it’s better or worse for you than normal butter. I guess, like most things, it prob comes down to moderation no?
cheese
One of my kids is a cheese-a-holic, the other hates it with a passion (so they’re not identical in every way!)
I can’t promise you this will work, but I’ve yet to fail in any of the places I’ve tried it. Just BYO beeswax wraps (AKA the new cling-film) to a cheese deli, and they’ll (probably) happily sell you a chunk in your own wrapper. Some places use wax paper to wrap but most wax paper is coated in a (petroleum based) paraffin wax, which makes it non-recyclable or compostable.
If feta’s your thing, I keep spotting a fancy one in glass jars in some of the fancy places I sometimes spend too much money in. It’s made by the Blackwoods Cheese Company.
yogurt
Like the rest of the dairy things, plastic-free yogurt isn’t easy to find - especially in supermarkets.
In bigger stores, you might get lucky and find Liberté yogurts in glass pots. The pots are keepers (see pic). We’ve got a stash that we use for chocolate mouses, fancy granola parfait things, and I even knocked up a few homemade candles in them at Christmas.
Or, you can hunt down River Cottage yogurts. We get ours delivered by Milk & More, which couldn’t be easier.
Finally, a lot of people (not just hippies) swear by homemade yogurt. I’m tempted to get one of these makers and give it a go myself.
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