Plastic Free July 2026 – A Review
Plastic Free July is over for another year. Two members of the Waste and Resource Recovery Group turned their minds to the challenge. Barb Benham singled out the disposable coffee cup as an easy target for the month. “Most coffee cups contain plastic, even the so-called compostable cups. Make your own coffee in a thermal keep cup before your journey. Save $$ on a purchased takeaway and reduce your intake of microplastics, reduce landfill and the litter problem. Avoid cafes that only use disposables and have your keep cup in your bag – it’s not rocket science that’s gonna help the planet, just a bit of weaning off convenience!!” Barbara has suggested that locals ask for a discount when they bring their own Keep Cup to a café.
Philippa Hambleton subjected her family to a month of Plastic Free July. “We started Plastic Free July with the goal of trying to eliminate plastic packaging where we could but not beating ourselves up where we couldn’t. Some items were easy to buy without plastic – fruit and vegetables, bread from the bakery in paper, spreads in glass jars, some pasta and milk in a cardboard carton (albeit with a plastic liner).
The butcher didn’t seem to mind that we brought our own container to be filled, but the pet mince was prepackaged so we had no choice but to buy it in plastic. One of the supermarkets refused to use our container at the deli and also wouldn’t simply wrap the food in paper without a plastic bag – Brick Bats to that store.
By far the hardest items to purchase plastic packaging free were dairy foods. With the exception of a rather delicious creamy blue vein in foil and cardboard packaging, most dairy products, including yoghurt, blocks of cheese and cream, are packaged in plastic. We did better when we had lentil dahl on the menu, as we could buy red lentils in bulk from the health food store in paper bags.
One advantage of avoiding plastic packaging is that our bin has been largely empty all month and this makes the effort feel like it has been worth it. We will keep buying as much produce from the farmers market and bread in paper bags, as these are easy acts of planetary kindness. The challenge of living completely plastic free is difficult, but it’s also a journey of awareness into how much of our food is unnecessarily packaged in plastic. We actually need big systemic changes to address the plastic overwhelm in our society, but it’s worth remembering that individual actions DO count. Systems, after all, are made up of individuals, and grass roots movements like Plastic Free July exert bottom-up pressure on those systems to affect change.”