Drinks- Alchohol, cocktails & mixers index

18 July 2012 by Plastic Is Rubbish Posted in 3.1 Food & Drink, 3.1 Special days & Parties Tagged 3.1.3 drinks, 3.1.5 Christmas, 5 Content Veiw 1 Comment

Plastic free booze is hard to find….glup!!!!. But as giving up IS NOT AN OPTION…here are our best choices….

The Plastic In Booze

Metal caps have a plastic liner or small disc to prevent leakage. It’s a tiny amount but it is plastic. This is true of everything from spirits to bottles of beer
Cans of beer and tonic are plastic lined!
Wine may have plastic corks. Even if you find a wine with a cork the foil round it may be plastic lined!

Plasticless….

Spirits & Liquors
To be truly plastic free, you may have to set up a still in the back garden! Unless you can get to one of these liquid delis. Failing that you can at least buy British made.

Buy On Line

These shops sell plastic free products and send them out in plasticless packages. Find them HERE

Or Amazon eek!

For the rest,this Amazon shopping list may inspire you. Amazon is a very dirty word at the moment and I thought long and hard before suggesting them. Heres why I went ahead….. No we are not entirely happy with Amazons recent history. However these links are for 3rd party sellers, we have always found the Amazon service to be good and their packaging usually compostable. In the absence of anything else we feel we can recommend them.


Andrew James Double Walled Insulated Stainl…	Premier Housewares Sphere Ice Bucket – Stai…	Stainless Steel Ice Cube Tray – BPA Free £40.00

FIREFLY® Eco Straws – Stainless Steel D… £9.99	Stainless Steel Martini Picks – Pack of 6 \|… £9.99	Sustainable Bamboo Drinking Straws – 12 Pack £14.95

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Milk & Milkmen

18 June 2012 by Plastic Is Rubbish Posted in 3.1 Food & Drink, 3.2 Shops & Businesses Tagged 3.1.2 refill, 3.1.3 drinks, 3.6 #P-fU.K. Directory, 5 Content Veiw 15 Comments

British consumers got through nine billion pints of milk last year. 90% of that milk was bought in a plastic container. That’s a lot of plastic trash only a percentage of which gets recycled. See some recycling stats here.

Here are some ways to buy plastic free milk

get a milkman – see below

find a milk vending machine. more common n the continent but popping up here.

buy direct from the farmer
Buying milk straight from the farm is one way to make sure crisis-hit dairy producers get a fair deal.
Farmers Weekly has created a map of British farmers selling direct to the public – cutting out the supermarket or middleman.
Some produce pasteurised milk, others sell raw or unpasteurised and a few have a wider dairy range to try.

See the map here

Milk Delivery
Glass milk bottles can be re-used up to 20 times. By my calculations that means that 1 bottle lasts 20 days that equals 18 bottles a year as oppose to 364 plastic bottles a year.So I got myself a milk man with real glass bottles.

Do you want one? Course you do!
Are they expensive? I pay £1.70 for 2 pints of organic semi skimmed delivered to my door.

This his website can help Find Me A Milkman does exactly what it says on the tin. Type in your postcode to find who is delivering in your area. N.B. Not all deliveries are in glass – you will have to check

Milk and More Dairycrest also deliver nationally. However they were looking to phase out glass bottle and replace them with plastic. You can read more here

Local & Glass

These companies are smaller and usually local businesses. When last checked, the delivered milk in glass bottles – BUT DO DOUBLE CHECK

In The North

Darlington

Darlington Acorn Dairy, do doorstep delivery in glass bottles. They deliver to Darlington,South Durham and the Dales/North Yorkshire.

Huddersfield

Ian on 0795 829 0246 delivers.

Lancaster
This is thanks to the students of Landcaster who gave up plastic for Lent. May be out of date but worth a try.In case anyone is looking for a Lancaster Milkman, here is a useful list compiled by Emily! Milkmen in Lancaster (April 2009)
Raymond McDougall tel: 01524 36158 – covers Fairfield and the Marsh.
Hey & Sons tel: 01524 770343 – covers Primrose, Greaves, Scotforth, Piccadilly and Lancaster University.
Martin Edwards tel: 07739 486357 – covers Hala.
Colin Johnson tel: 01524 36222 – covers Aldcliffe, Ashton Road, Torrington Road.

Leeds
Mc Queens Diaries deliver to Headingly Leeds and perhaps other places too

Manchester
Cream Online is a great doorstep delivery service that does milk in glass bottles. But also juice! And it delivers a veg box which when I asked they told was very much plastic reduced. I didn’t actually use the veg box service so you might want to double check.It also delivers all kinds of other essentials. Not plastic free stuff but not from a chain either. Rather it is a local, family run company.

Midlands

Moofresh – loads of different milk in glass bottles. They deliver round Birmingham and Tamworth – you can find a full list of places here on their website

The Cotteswold Dairy serve:
Tewkesbury
Cheltenham
Shrewsbury
Colony Bay
More info here

Kirby & West https://www.kirbyandwest.co.uk/

Family run dairy business delivering milk and other products to doorsteps around Leicester, Market Harborough and Lutterworth.

South

London

Parker Dairies is a small independant dairy situated in Walthamstow, supplying milk and other goods all over east london and the city. parkerdairies.co.uk

Suffolk

www.suffolkcheese.co.uk £1 for 1L bottle £1 to fill it from a vending machine.

North Oxfordshire

North Aston Dairy

North Aston
Somerton
Upper Heyford
Lower Heyford
Steeple Aston
Middle Aston
Duns Tew
Deddington
Wolvercote

We deliver the milk late afternoon onto doorsteps in glass litre bottles. It is pasteurised but unhomogenized so has a lovely layer of cream on top. We also attend East Oxford farmers market every Saturday. Follow us on twitter @northastondairy Enquiries – northastondairy@phonecoop.coop

Ongar Dairy

Epping
Loughton
Chigwell

@ongardairy

Milk delivery across Epping Loughton and Chigwell. Our product range includes local and organic produce delivered by 7am ongardairy@gmail.com

Essex

Essex Dairys @essexdairys Twitter Says YES they deliver in glass!

Milk, eggs, cheese, yogurts and much more delivered to offices, restaurants and homes across Essex and guaranteed by 7am!! Contact us at essexdairys@gmail.com

Felsted, England

U.K. Wide

And this website can help Find Me A Milkman does exactly what it says on the tin. Type in your postcode to find who is delivering in your area.
N.B. Not all deliveries are in glass – you will have to check

Milk and More Dairycrest deliver nationally. Dairycrest is a big company that deliver nationwide. However they were looking to phase out glass bottle and replace them with plastic. You can read more here

Milk Dispensers

If you can’t find a local milk man why not petition your supermarket to set up a milk dispenser where you can refill your own bottles.

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Water Refills World Wide

7 May 2012 by Plastic Is Rubbish Posted in 3.1 Disposables & Reusables, 3.2 Travel Tagged 3 water, 3.1.2 refill, 3.1.3 drinks, 5 Content Veiw

Find out first

Of course water in many countries the water is actually safe to drink – you can find out where here.

Sterilise Your Own Water
When it’s not we don’t buy water in plastic bottles. NO its just wrong. Instead we sterilize our own water using a Steripen ….

When a bottle refill service is offered we will use that instead.

Find A Refill Service

S.E. Asia Thailand & Malaysia
Phillipines
India
China

Water At Home

The U.K. is one country lucky enough to have safe drinking water BUT sometimes when you are out and about it can be hard to access tap. These worthy schemes aim make safe, free, tap water available.

Water Bottles

Check out which water bottle here

Juice and juicers

5 November 2010 by Plastic Is Rubbish Posted in 3.1 Food & Drink Tagged 3.1.3 drinks, 3.2.4 cook book, 4 plastic2cut plastic, 4 Reviews, 4.1 plastic we use

I can easily avoid juice screw top lids, and plastic lined tetra packs, by making my own juice.

Now I have been putting this off for a while because I thought it would take a lot of labour and time . Don’t like the first and don’t have enough of the latter. But I have heard so much good about fresh juice and juicing recently I began to think it might be worth it.

And our tree is covered with apples no good for eating but if I juice them then maybe. Well at worst I could make cider surely??

So I bought a Philips Juicer and though there was some plastic wrapping most of the protective gubbins was cardboard. Result.

Better still it is really easy to use and clean. No peeling no seeding chuck the fruit in.

Since then I have been juicing everything – really I mean everything. Both fruit and veg are quickly reduced liquid and its great for using up things – bit of pepper, some dried up ginger, half a lemon and a soggy tomato – in they go along with the broccoli stems and sour allotment apples. I know it sounds gross but so far it has all tasted good.

Totally recommend this product

PLASTIC ALERT

Of course the juicer has plastic elements but we don’t boycott all plastics. We think that there are some valid uses for the product ( gasp!! yes I know…you can read our reasons here). The juicer fits into the

Plastic products that reduce the use of plastic disposables

Straws – reusable

11 February 2010 by Plastic Is Rubbish Posted in 3.1 Disposables & Reusables Tagged 3.1 general, 3.1.2 reusables, 3.1.3 drinks, 3.2.2 Kitchen, 5 Content Veiw 10 Comments

I don’t use straws but if I did I would go for one of these.

Do note I have not used these myself so I cannot say how well they perform or what the onward packaging is like. You will have to check with the suppliers. Any one who has tried them, can review them or can recommend some other great product please do leave a comment. Together we can make changes.

Bamboo

Super fun for a cocktail party – haven’t tried them myself yet but will do….. You can get them from boobalu an ecofriendly online store

or these from Amazon

12 pack of bamboo straws.
The ecological choice for your health and the planet.
Washable. Reusable.
Made from 100% Real Whole Bamboo Stalks
Each straw is 10 inches in length
You can find a range of reusable straws on Amazon

Steel Straws

Urban techno chic! I love the look of them, stainless steel straws for the classiest of drinkers.

USA -Can be bought with a whole load of other good stuff from Reusable Bags (USA based).

Or you can make your own

UK – You can find a range of reusable straws on Amazon

Glass Straws

The glass straw man?? Yes he makes reusable glass straws. Glass straws may sound like a bonkers idea, but read this and then decide

I haven’t used them myself but if you fancy giving them a go they are currently available in the UK from EBAY and from this UK based online shop A Fine Choice

Disposables

If you must have disposable straws buy these compostable ones.

Campaigns

Join the straw wars here.

Buy

Being committed to local shopping, I prefer to buy that way whenever possible. I would encourage you to do the same. One of the joys of living plastic free is mooching round the local shops seeing what you can source. Coffee Evolution were doing take away ceramic cups for instance.

If you can’t buy local, please do check the links above. They look direct to the suppliers. Do consider buying from them and support their online businesses.

If you can’t do that then I have put together and Amazon catalogue. Yes I know…


NRS Healthcare Clear Safesip Drinks Glass a… £5.99	4 Straight Metal Drinking Straw Stainless S… £5.49	4 Metal Drinking Straw Stainless Steel Reus… £5.49

6 Metal Drinking Straw Stainless Steel Reus… £7.49	Kitchen Craft Stainless Steel Two-in-One Dr… £4.75	Stainless Steel Zack Vitis Straw Spoon Set/4 £12.00

Sustainable Bamboo Drinking Straws – 12 Pack £6.00

Amazon is a very dirty word at the moment and I thought long and hard before suggesting them. Heres why I went ahead….. No we are not entirely happy with Amazons recent history. However, we have always found their service to be good and their packaging usually compostable.

If you buy a product via this link we do get an affiliation fee for this. That’s not why we do it.

Sneaky Plastic Tea Bags

18 March 2009 by Plastic Is Rubbish Posted in 3.1 Food & Drink Tagged 3.0 sneaky plastic, 3.1.3 drinks, 5 Content Veiw 8 Comments

Whats in your tea bag? Paper and tea you wish but actually no.

Firstly is your bag made from paper? Are you sure? Because when you think about it if it really was made from paper why doesn’t it go all soggy when you submerge it in boiling water?

Plastic In The Bag
Well it could be because the actual bag that you thought was paper, does in fact contain plastic. This came to light when keen composters found fine plastic mesh in their compost bins. It was the plastic web that holds the teabags together and that doesn’t biodegrade.
The following was taken from the Guardian A report published today by Which? Gardening reveals that teabags produced by top tea manufacturers are only between 70-80% biodegradable. As a result, gardeners are finding the net part of teabags – caused by the inclusion of heat-resistant polypropylene – left on their compost heaps. Which? Gardening contacted the major tea manufacturers to check the content of their products. PG Tips responded: “‘Like most of the teabags in the UK, our teabags are made with about 80% paper fibre, which is fully compostable along with the tea leaves contained in the bag. The remaining packaging includes a small amount of plastic which is not fully biodegradable.”

Plastic Glue To Seal Them
Then there is the sealing. Wikipedia claims “Heat-sealed tea bag paper usually has a heat-sealable thermoplastic such as PVC

Chemical Treatment
OR that the paper has been treated with Epichlorohydrin to make it stronger
In the USA Epichlorohydrin is considered to be a potential carcinogen for purposes of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) hazard communication standard, 29 CFR 1910.1200.
European Statement from Dow Chemical:
“The substance should be regarded as if it is carcinogenic to man. There is sufficient evidence to provide a strong presumption that human exposure to the substance may result in the development of cancer.”
It is also used in epoxy resins, textiles, inks, dyes and rubber. Read more here.

Chlorine Bleaching
And those bags are so white because they have been bleached with chlorine.

All Plastic Bags
So much so you might feel almost relieved to know that some tea bags are actually made from plastic. Just plastic . Those silky pyramids for posh tea may not be silk but synthetic fibres.
Or maybe not. This post claims that chemicals each from the plastic into your te.

Plastic Free Tea Bags

The technology is out there to make plastic free teabags. You can find them here

Loose Tea

if none of the above suit you could always try The only alternative is loose tea. Initially this might seem like a lot of faff. First you will need to source some loose tea. You can find that here

Find other sneaky plastics here….

You can see all our hot drink posts here.

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Water – Tap

21 May 2008 by Plastic Is Rubbish Posted in 3.1 Food & Drink Tagged 3 water, 3.1.3 drinks

Tap Water

If you are lucky enough to live in a country where you can drink the tap water do so. Get a refillable water bottle, fill it with tap water and drink that.

Refillable Water Bottles

Check out which water bottle here

Refills

U.K. Refills

There are a number of innovative schemes out there that provide tap water refills for when you run out when out. You can find them here.

Outside The U.K.

Here are a list of places you can refill your bottle abroad

Not Safe?

Of course, sadly, water in many countries is not safe to drink – you can find out where here. When this is the case you can

Steralize Your Own Unsafe Tap Water

We sterilise unsafe tap water water using a Steripen …. but when a bottle refill service is offered we will use that instead.

Plastic Water Bottle Bans

Links to interesting projects that are tackling the problems of bottled water

If You Must…

Buy bottled water, you can get it packaged in PLA compostable plastic bottles. More info here…

The Plastic In Booze

Buy On Line

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This his website can help Find Me A Milkman does exactly what it says on the tin. Type in your postcode to find who is delivering in your area. N.B. Not all deliveries are in glass – you will have to check

Local & Glass

In The North

Huddersfield

Midlands

South

London

Suffolk

North Oxfordshire

Ongar Dairy

Essex

U.K. Wide

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Find A Refill Service

Water At Home

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PLASTIC ALERT

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Bamboo

Steel Straws

Glass Straws

Disposables

Campaigns

Buy

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Whats in your tea bag? Paper and tea you wish but actually no.

Plastic Free Tea Bags

Loose Tea

More

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Refillable Water Bottles

Refills

Not Safe?

Plastic Water Bottle Bans

If You Must…

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