PFJ UNPACKAGED

Not so earth loving, lovingearth

Well, that's the end of another Plastic Free July and a month of realising that if I want to actually do these things without ending up going periodically hungry then I really need to be a bit more diligent with my shopping routine (the road to plastic is paved with bad meal planning).

SHADES OF LUNCHTIME

One of the upsides of working in the city is I can go for a stroll by the waterfront, the park, or wander round the mall. One of the downsides of working in the city - at this time of year - is that it's stinking hot, and a casual wander generally turns into a casual browse in an air-conditioned shop, which often leads to the casual purchase of a casual item.

Not shopping is super easy when you don't go to the shops, I've discovered (call it a eureka moment) - but when the beckoning CBD is a useful and healthy excuse to get out of the office, then what?
So as an alternative to casual consumption, I've decided to do mini photo-walks instead. Whatever I can find and shoot in half an hour, give or take. At the absolute worst time of the day for photography. The added bonus is that it will hopefully kick-start my photography mojo, which has been flagging these last few months. And, as I'm waiting on a new (secondhand) battery charger for my DSLR, I'll be using my neglected point and shoot. I've never really clicked with it (no pun) so it'll be a good time to figure out if we're going to get along in the long run.

PREPPING FOR PLASTIC FREE

Though I'm unsure why the month of July was chosen, I do know that Plastic Free July is an initiative started in Perth, Western Australia that challenges people to go a month without plastic – either by seeking alternatives for a few key items or going cold turkey on everything packaged. Though I haven’t posted any updates for a couple of months (oops), my own efforts to keep my plastic consumption down have ebbed and flowed with varying degrees of success over 2013. My usage of single or short-term use plastic is way down but I have fallen afoul of hidden packaging on a couple of occasions (namely with appliances, most companies use very little plastic in their packaging these days but you still get the odd anomaly). While I’ve been making decent inroads, it’s probably a good time to try and kick start some new habits for the areas I still haven’t tackled yet. So I’m going to try and go completely plastic-free for the month, and will post a tally of any plastic I do accumulate, plus tips on what I use in an average day and how I found a replacement for it.

2013 - THE YEAR OF PLASTIC 'LITE'

2012 was the first year I can remember that had such a major theme for me. Towards the end of 2011 I decided to move from my somewhat quiet rural life in England, where I'd been living for 5 years, and head back home to Australia. Of course with great moving, comes great sorting. I gave myself 6 months to sift through my houseful of possessions, and decide what was making the journey over with me.

A funny thing happened; the more I sorted, and the more I sold or donated, the more I realised that there was a hell of a lot of 'stuff' in my life. Probably slightly less than the average Westerner as I don't own many gadgets, but still I'd somehow gathered what seemed like a lot of moss. This was surprising as I've always considered myself as not owning that much. There's nothing like packing it down into a few boxes to challenge that perception.