We are at the end of plastic free July – you can join the challenge to reduce single-use plastic waste everyday at home, work, school, and even at your local café https://www.plasticfreejuly.org/ We’re sure the challenge will continue.

Here at GO Local Food we practise being plastic free every week. In our initial research some 11 years ago we asked local residents to identify their environmental concerns and discovered that reducing plastic use was a priority for many people. The principle of – reduce – recycle – reuse (refill) is taken very seriously.

Consequently our weekly crop share comes mud wrapped! (rather than plastic wrapped). Members bring their own bags and weigh their own veg.

As a co-op we looked for more ways to demonstrate our concern for the environment and set up a ‘buying group’ offering members the opportunity to buy directly from SUMA organic goods https://wholesale.suma.coop/ this has been hugely successful, with members (now) placing monthly orders for everything from dog food to chopped walnuts and delivered to our fields.

And then one of our members suggested we needed to encourage our members to do more to reduce plastic use and so we extended our SUMA ordering to include a regular supply of body and household cleaning products. We bulk purchase washing up liquid, multi surface cleaner, shampoo etc. The range of products and therefore number of containers, seems to grow and grow. Members bring their empty bottles and refill. Refilling is very popular. In the last 12 months we have ordered a total of 140 ltrs of washing up liquid.  The average washing up liquid bottle is 450ml, which could mean 311 bottles were refilled rather than bought.

There are many benefits to being a member – working towards being plastic free is just one of them.