Easter “wasted” in Devon

Its all about the beaches.....

Easter holiday challenge to try and go away for a week and still keep to the spirit of plastic redacting. Could family Harrison manage it?

We had settled on cottage rental in South Devon this holiday, in the hope that heading south might lead to some better weather than our snowy experience last Easter in the wilds of Yorkshire, and a few more beaches for obligatory sandcastle building. I made sure lots of food containers and water bottles were packed with the intention of trying to find as much local produce plastic free and ensure pack lunches were the order of the day.

Foraging in Kingsbridge

We were very lucky that the local town we were staying near, Kingsbridge, is stuck in the 1940s and has not just one but two butchers, two bakeries and a traditional greengrocer. And guess what I found at the green grocer – a cucumber not wrapped in plastic film! I knew it was out there somewhere, I just needed to travel to Devon to find it.

Naked cucumber!

Mixed results at the bakery when ordering a loaf of bread. As we were on holiday I thought I would splash out and ask the lady in the shop to bung it through the slicing machine for some extra thrills. All very exciting until eldest child pipes up – “Mummy, she’s putting it in a plastic bag!”. Oh well…

Sadly no local glass milk bottles and there was some plastic packaging purchasing in the local Tesco to stock up on pasta etc., but foodwise we tried to keep with the plastic redacting we’ve trained ourselves into. One slight slippage was some sneaky multipacks of crisps that made it back to the cottage for packed lunches. Hands up – it was me that plonked them in the trolley. However, in my defence, I have kept all of the packets ready to go to one of the three crisp packet recycling locations in Wallingford. (Two set up by Walkers, one in Waitrose and one in Sportswize, with the stationers picking up KP snacks recycling)

Meanwhile, back at the cottage…

On first viewing, based on what was set up in the cottage, waste collection in South Devon is very different to South Oxon. At the cottage everything goes in to a green sack destined for landfill.

Surely not!! This didn’t seem right. A quick search of the South Hams waste site showed that they do collect recycling, but it’s a tad complicated.

There’s a blue sack for paper and cardboard, a clear sack for plastic bottles, tins, cans and foil, a brown bin for food and garden waste then a grey bin for everything else. This all gets collected on alternative fortnights. So the owner of the cottage has obviously thrown their hands up in despair and, to keep things simple for tourists, recommended plonking everything into one bag.

We managed to save some recyclables to dispose of at recycling banks, but it was a bit disheartening to plonk stuff that could be recycled into a great big landfill sack, and even though plastic bottles could be recycled by the South Hams, there was a lot of plastic such as yoghurt pots that wouldn’t be recycled – it made me appreciate how much plastic recycling gets picked up back home.

Days out on the beach

Looking at all the local leaflets at the cottage of tourist spots to go, one of the things that caught my eye was a two-page spread on reducing plastic. Being a coastal area, plastic waste on the beaches is a big problem and there was a good infographic on how live with less plastic, most of which we are already doing – go us!

But one really good holiday activity was to spend a couple of minutes on the beach picking up any plastic we could find and putting it in the bin. So that’s what we did every time we went to a beach. There was one distressing moment for eldest child when she couldn’t get to a plastic bottle that was wedged between some rocks on the beach and couldn’t be got at, but we did our best. We also didn’t just limit ourselves to the beaches, and picked up litter as we went for a walk up some of Dartmoor’s tors. So, doing our bit.

Knick Knacks

Eldest child is starting to hit anti-plastic fatigue, asking on holiday when it’s all going to be over. The news that we weren’t planning to stop in the near future was met with a steely eyed stare that only children can give. This all came to a head when passing out of one tourist attraction gift shop and guess what, about 95% of the gifts are plastic toot which we really don’t need in our lives. There was a lot of sighing and snivels, but in the end we “settled” for a simple set of notepads that were metal bound and made of paper and cardboard, rather than the gaudy, cheaper plastic hologram unicorn notepads that would have been the notepad of choice.

Retrospectively, I wondered if the notepads we did get were all that sustainable as we couldn’t tell if they were made from recycled materials or not. Perhaps we need to curtail our desire for souvenirs of our holidays – we can get just as many memories from our holidays from photos and scrap books than knick knacks.

Back home – plastic free Easter

So the break came to an end just before the Easter weekend, so we had the added challenge of attempting plastic free Easter. One of the things we managed was an almost plastic free seminal cake. The bulk of the dried fruit came from Just Trading in Wallingford and other ingredients were in paper bags etc. Only exception was the brown sugar, which I’ve only been able to find in plastic bags, and glacier cherries which I could only find in a plastic tub, though I think you can get a cocktail variety in a glass jar in some places – thing to look out for on future shops. But the key ingredient of the marzipan icing was all home made and plastic free as the almonds came from Just Trading as well. Using this recipe, the marzipan turned out well, though my counting of the number of balls on top went a bit wrong with a small child hovering at my side trying the eat them at the same time, hence I made too many to compensate for the losses!

For the obligatory Easter Egg hunt, we reused some empty plastic egg shells we’d picked up a few years ago and have been reusing ever since. Fillings this year were sweets from Mr Simms’ pick and mix selection in town, some mini eggs from cardboard tubes, and a few small second hand Lego sets that when broken down fill the eggs nicely. That, coupled with a number of eggs sent over by family (mother in-law thoughtfully only sent foil wrapped bunnies our way this year) there was enough to keep the kids busy for five minutes and enough chocolate to keep us going for a couple of weeks without too much plastic waste.

Happy Easter!