post

You want flesh…. you want it now. Sadly you are not a Zombie so you  have to use the normal channels.
Shops – where so much of the meat comes plastic packed. So what to do?

First find some unpacked meat or fish.
Sadly butchers and fish mongers are becoming rarer and I would urge you to support your local shop if you have one. Need to find a butcher – try this site.
But if you don’t a lot a supermarkets have fish and meat counters.

Having sourced the meat you now have 2 options

Bring your own reusable container or tub


I take my own tub to the butchers and ask them to use that. I use a plastic tub because it is water proof, lightweight, I have had them for ages and there is lots of wear in them yet.
If you are worried about chemical leaching you might not want to use plastic tubs. As you know, if you wash plastic at hot enough temperatures to clean the container properly, it is more likely to leach chemicals. And that plastic leaches more chemicals as it ages.
You can get metal or glass dishes and use those instead. Glass is heavy so I would recommend metal dishes.

Disposable Bags

And some times, it doesn’t matter what I take, I get refusals.Supermarkets especially are not keen on this and will argue long and hard. Even some local butchers will refuse. Their argument is if there was a bug in the tub that made you sick, their product might be blamed.

Keep calm and read on.

After being turned away from a supermarket meat counter I decided to see what they did in Modbury the plastic bag free town. Modbury is as as I am sure you know, the first town in the UK to go plastic bag free. I spoke to the lovely Simon Wilkinson – the Modbury butcher. He told me he used biodegradable  corn starch bags made from PLA plastic  -made from vegetables they are fully compostable.
So I went online and got myself some 6 litre bio bags, the right size for a medium size chicken.

Buy 

Since then compostable PLA bags have become available everywhere. You can buy them in most supermarkets and there are lots of online shops to choose from. There are more details here on what bag to buy and from where.

Disposing Of Bags

I recommend finding reuses for your disposable packaging, (for example using the bio bags to line your compost bin). And after I’ve done that, I compost them!

Yes. In my back yard bin.

Some say that compostable plastics do not break down in home compost bins. THEY ARE WRONG.
We have used and composted bio bags and other compostable plastic products for years now.

Compostable Plastics 

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. For a man-made product to be sold as compostable, it has to meet certain standards.

One such is the European Norm EN13432. You can find out more here.

Composting Plastic At Home

While most agree that some plastics are indeed compostable, many say that it can only composted in large scale municipal schemes. As we don’t have many large scale municipal schemes this they say is a pointless advantage. I say the days of large scale municipal schemes is fast approaching as governments aim to divert biodegradable rubbish from landfill sites.

But more to the point, I have been composting my compostable plastic at home for years now, including Biobags, deli pots  and disposable cutlery. Read more about that HERE.
It does take longer than other products and  sometimes I have found shreds of it in my compost but I dig it into the soil where it quickly disappears.

Read more about compostable plastics here

Greenwashing
And never forget that bio-degradable plastic bags do not biodegrade where as compostable plastic bags do compost. Not all bio-plastics (plant derived plastics) are compostable. Read more here.

More
How Do I Compost?
I have a Green Joanna compost bin and I  compost up in the North of England.
Need to find a butcher – try this site.
Other plastic free packaging