During the past month of July, Te Ipukarea Society ran a series of posts on how we can minimise the use of single use plastics in our day to day lives.

Plastic free July is a movement aimed at raising awareness regarding the harmful impacts plastics have on our environment and personal health. The campaign also helps to encourage people to consider practicing simple tips and tricks on how to use less or no plastics at all during the month of July.

The first ever ‘Plastic Free July’ campaign started back in 2011, initiated by Rebecca Prince-Ruiz and a few people from the local Western Australian Government. It is amazing to now see a small campaign from Australia has now gone global with millions of participants from numerous different countries getting involved.

Plastic free July is also part of the Plastic Free Foundation Ltd, a non-profit organisation. They believe that ‘small changes add up to a big difference’. An admirable sentiment given some people may believe as an individual we don’t have much of an impact. This global movement is now proving otherwise. The Plastic Free Foundation Ltd was also founded by Rebecca Prince-Ruiz, in 2017.

We started our series with an interesting suggestion from our New Zealand volunteer, Rachel Selwyn on how we can repurpose an eco-dishwashing liquid container into a useful hip bag to carry rat bait used in rat baiting work in the Takitumu Conservation Area.

The classic reminder to remember your reusable coffee cup when visiting your favourite coffee shop not only looks trendy but also contributes to significantly reducing the amount of waste ending up in our landfill.

Tips that also have cost effective benefits included buying in bulk. If you are noticing items in your house are running out faster, consider buying these items in bulk if possible. For instance, instead of purchasing the small packets of coffee, grab the larger packages. The same applies with items like chips, butter or margarine. As an added bonus, the larger bulk containers become useful to reuse as food storage containers which are proving to be quite expensive these days.

Whilst out and about looking for takeaways, consider taking along a makeshift cutlery kit to use at the food vendors site. This is done by grabbing some pieces of cutlery from your own drawer and folding it nicely in a tea-towel before securing it with either some rope string or a hair tie. This will generate less disposable waste.  You can also take your own reusable take home containers.

Now having rolled on into August, we would hope some of these day to day reusable and refusing plastic tips would continue to be practiced in our day to day lives. It doesn’t matter what small change you start with just remember that “small changes can add up to big differences”.