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Anything But Plastic Online Shop

by Posted in 3.2 Shops & Businesses, 3.6 Businesses & social enterprises, 3.6 P-f U.K Directory Tagged

Anything But Plastic sells alternatives to plastic products in order to reduce everyday plastic consumption and help tackle plastic pollution. As well as trying to provide plastic free alternatives, this shop wants its customers to make informed purchases and promote sustainable buying practices.

The aim of Anything But Plastic is to bring together as many as possible of the individual brands and companies that produce plastic free alternative products and provide a platform of convenience for the average consumer to purchase these goods. Cutting down on plastic should not have to be hard, inconvenient or time consuming. With this site I hope to get rid of these obstacles, which will hopefully bring about some positive change and make going plastic-free an easy choice.

Website:
www.anythingbutplastic.co.uk

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/anythingbutplastic/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/trashplasticnow
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/anythingbutplastic/

More

This shop sells plastic free floss… and you know how hard that is to find.

Please note…
This post was written by the contributor. and  is  a PfU.K. Directory submission.

And the Pf U.K. Directory is…?
…a directory of UK-based groups, organisations businesses and individuals who are responding to the problems presented by the misuse of plastic. That does not mean anti-plastic necessarily but certainly plastic-problem aware.

The DIRECTORY is to promote their fantastic work. Read more here…

Got a project?
It is very easy to get a project featured. Each contributor submits a short synopsis of their project, focussing on the plastic aware element and I post it. You can read the submission guidelines here.

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Do you want to contribute

by Posted in 3.6 P-f U.K Directory, 4.0 Us, the boycott & the blog

Want to contribute to the blog? We would love to feature you. There are a number of ways we can do this. You can writ about your:
plasticfree initiative/ business :
Write about your plastic free town:
Review a product:
Contribute to the database

Please
Note is for UK relavant projects and products only.

Guest Posts & Reviews

We always love product reviews but insist that you have actually used the product. Reviews must include at least 1 place for UK residents to buy it can be online, it can be in Sweden as long as they post to the UK.
Please comment on how it was packaged.
Do check to see if your product has already been featured

Tell us about how you shop plasticfree in your town – Where you go and which shops. Do look to see if your town has already been featured.

Or something else.

We are currently looking for input on
The plastic free baby
Waste free kids
Real nappies,
compostable nappies
Plasticfree pets

Please email and ask us for an updated list of topics. Or perhaps suggest something we might be interested in.


Wrapping & Packaging

If you are writing about a product please do try to write about the packaging too. Plastic free and plastic reduced products are of course a great step forward in the battle against plastic. However a lot of people buying products also want to know how the product is packaged. Many feel there is little point buying a wooden comb if it comes in a plastic bag. So it is important to say how the product will be wrapped.

If it comes via an online, postal service, onward packaging needs to be clarified. You should say how the product will be packed and the more information the better. Include what kind of tape is used (whether it is plastic or not) and whether the invoice will be in a plastic bag on the front of the box. People appreciate it.

Post Format

This is very important. Sadly I do not have time to edit the documents.
If you want your links to link to an external site when pressed your submission must be supplied in an HTML format like this

There are <a href=”http://plasticisrubbish.com/” target=”_blank”>some useful links here ….</a>

If not they must be as a proper address that can be cut and pasted i.e.www.plasticisrubbish.com

Same goes the pictures. The code must included within the body of the text and should look like this.

<a href=”http://plasticisrubbish.com/2016/07/02/july/img_7309/#main” rel=”attachment wp-att-35794″><img class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-35794″ src=”http://plasticisrubbish.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_7309-e1499841539491.jpg” alt=”” width=”780″ height=”300″ /></a>

One way to do this is post the post on your own blog or website, add the links and pictures and format as you would normally would. This way you can also test them. You can then a copy of the post in text format with the links code showing.
Post Headers
The blog demand that I have a post header. So you need to attach a separate picture which I can download. This must be a jpeg, copyright free and no bigger than 40KB.

StrongerUpdating & Adding To Posts

I always wanted the blog to be a resource where numerous people could Collaborate on producing the bestest ever data base of plastic free resources for UK plastivists.

So if you want to contribute and I hope you do, please do this.

It’s not perfect but here’s how it works: find a plastic free product i.e. Pasta, search the database or A to Z index to see if there is already an entry for that product. If so, add the details in the comments for that post. You should be able to do this quite easily via any of your social media accounts.
If you have a post on the subject on your own blog please  leave a link to your own post again in the comments section.

WHAT! NO POST? if you cannot find a post about pasta for example, tell me and I will set one  up.
Sharing Is caring
And with your contributions,  posts can stay up to date and we can all benefit from each other’s expertise.
Read more about adding info HERE

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Snact in compostable packaging

by Posted in 3.1 Food & Drink, 3.6 Businesses & social enterprises, 3.6 P-f U.K Directory Tagged , 5 Comments

Snacks… so good when trekking, so hard to source plastic free. The best we have is loose nuts as sold at Lidles,  Until now!

Take a look at Snact. Fighting food waste and plastic pollution and making some fine tasty vegan goodness while they are at it.

They “make snacks from surplus produce. That’s produce that would otherwise be thrown away for being too big, too small, too ugly, or simply too abundant. Tonnes of perfectly good fruit and vegetables get rejected before reaching shop shelves in the UK. We turn that surplus into healthy snacks that contribute to one of your five a day.

Already like them but here’s the really good stuff. “fruit jerky will now be available in 100% home compostable packaging – the first of its kind in the UK!”

Our new innovative packaging, developed by Israeli start-up TIPA, is just as durable and impermeable as ordinary plastic – but it biologically decomposes within just 180 days and becomes a fertiliser for soil, behaving similarly to an orange peel.

Currently they do 3 flavours
Apple & Mango
A full and juicy flavour combining the natural sweetness of mango and tartness of apples.
Apple, Blueberry & Banana
A guaranteed crowd-pleaser with the deep flavour of blueberry and a subtle hint of banana sweetness.
Apple & Raspberry
Naturally sweet, tangy & punchy, just like you’d expect raspberries to be.

All are
100% fruit
Vegan & gluten free
No additives or preservatives
Less than 65kcal per bag
Made in the UK
In home compostable packaging. That means you can compost the wrapper at home!

Buy

You can find out more about Snact and buy bars here

More About The Snacks

Hand made on a family farm in Kent with whole fresh fruit sourced predominantly from British surplus produce, it is vegan, gluten free, low calorie, and counts towards your five a day. We don’t use any concentrates, additives, or preservatives, just 100% fruit.

Until they went BANANAS
Their new banana based bar will be out soon. Congratulations on raising the money to do this “Bananas are the most popular fruit in the world, but also one of the most wasted. We want to stop 1.4m bananas going to waste every day by turning them into awesome food waste-fighting delicious banana bars – or if we may: the best bars on and for the planet!”

More About The Packaging

Tipa have developed a a bio- plastic which I take to mean made with plants. It is compostable and meets composting standards. “Tipa’s products, compounds and films comply with EU 13432 and ASTM D6400 standards and are certified for both home and industrial composting through the OK Compost mark by the Vincotte institute. Tipa’s materials also meet food contact regulation requirements in Europe and the US.”  And they say it can be composted at home.

Composting Plastic At Home
FYI While most agree that some  plastics are indeed compostable, many say that they can only composted in large scale municipal schemes. I have used and composted a number of compostable plastic products 

Biodegradable, Compostable Plastics

What is biodegradable? Biodegradable products break down through a naturally occurring microorganism into simple, stable compounds which can be absorbed into the ecosystem. More about biodegrading here

What is compostable? To be classed compostable, items must biodegrade within a certain time (around the rate at which paper biodegrades), and the resulting biomass must be free of toxins, able to sustain plant life and be used as an organic fertilizer or soil additive. Read more about compostable plastics here

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Hodmedods – British Grown Beans, Grains & Pulses

by Posted in 3.1 Food & Drink, 3.6 Businesses & social enterprises, 3.6 P-f U.K Directory Tagged , , , ,

Did you now you can get homegrown British beans, lentils (soon) and even Quinoa. Many of them organically grown….

Introducing Hodmedod’s

“We work with British farms to source a range of top quality ingredients and delicious foods. We’re particularly interested in searching out less well-known foods, like the fava bean – grown in Britain since the Iron Age but now almost forgotten – and black badger peas.
THE GREAT BRITISH BEANS PROJECT
We founded Hodmedod following the successful Great British Beans trial project to stimulate and assess demand for indigenous pulses.”

So far so fantastic but it gets better…

Plastic Free Packaging

“Many thanks for your enquiry.

Using recyclable packaging is something we feel very strongly about and we are avoiding plastic where we can. We are aiming for all plastic-free packaging.
So far all our 500g packs of dried pulses and grains are packed in compostable plant based cellophane.
At the moment we are still struggling to find a compostable sticker adhesive, but you can peel off the sticker and pop the rest in the compost.
most bulk bags are paper
our packaging puffs are compostable non-GM maize.

Unfortunately we are unable to offer this for our snack range which are packaged in impermeable packaging and resistant to break down from the oils within them and no biodegradable packaging we are aware of fulfils these stipulations.”

Heres the product range but do check the site as there may be more by now

Pulses & Beans
Yellow Peas split
Green Peas, Split
Fava Bean split and whole
Carlin / Yellow / Blue Peas,
Red Haricot Beans

Lentils coming soon

Quinoa
Wholegrain White Quinoa

Grains
Spelt,
Emmer,
Einkorn,
Naked Oats

Flaked & Puffed Grains
Quinoa Flakes,
Quinoa Puffs,
Naked Barley Flakes

Seeds
Camelina Seed

Buy from the Hodmedod’s website

More

Buy Local, Buy British
Check out other British based stores and products HERE

Other options for loose beans include

Wholefood Market a supermarket chain
Weigh & Save shops a UK franchise
And other loose food outlets as listed below

Loose Food A to Z
Find out if a shop near you sells bulk food loose. This is stuff that that normally comes plastic packaged ie rice, pasta and salt. And yes these shops do exist in the U.K. There’s just not many of them.
Heres alist of towns with shops selling loose food.


 Packaging

While these shops provide bags and they are almost always plastic ones. You will need to take your own plastic-free /reusable bags.

More Food

Check out the tasty food index to find lots of plastic-free GRUB yum yum!