Spain gets tough on plastic

In case you did not know it, July has been designated plastic awareness month to highlight the amount of none bio-degradable waste that is filling our landfills and floating around our oceans.

Going completely plastic free (finding alternatives to everything) for a day, week, month or more can be a bit of a challenge yet, just 50 years ago we relied on glass, cloth and paper to get our goods home from the market.

Drinks came in bottles, while meat and fish were wrapped in paper before being taken home in a reusable bag made from cotton. All of these items could be recycled and in the case of the shopping bag used over and over again.

Spain recently passed a law that requires all supermarkets and shops to charge for plastic bags, even telling pharmacies that they must charge for the little bags they used to put your prescriptions in.

This new law has now got supermarkets such as Lidl vowing to stop selling plastic bags by the end of the year, opting to offer a bag made of fibres from the raffia palm tree.

Single-use plastic water bottles are one of the biggest problems due to the fact they are discarded once the water has been drunk. It also takes three times the amount of water in the bottle to produce it. A great alternative already available is to use paper products like the ones we often buy milk and fruit juices in.