Simple Ways to Reduce Plastic in the Kitchen

Why the Kitchen Is the Easiest Place to Begin

Tip out your kitchen bin and sort through it, and you will probably find that a good deal of what is in there never needed to be plastic in the first place. Cling film stretched over a bowl of leftovers, a bag of salad that wilted before you reached it, the tray under a pack of peppers. None of it is dramatic on its own, but it adds up week after week — and the kitchen is where most households can make the fastest progress for the least effort.

Reducing plastic here does not mean turning your cupboards inside out or spending a fortune on matching glassware. It means changing a handful of habits, usually one at a time, until the alternatives feel like the normal thing to reach for.

Swap Cling Film for Reusable Wraps and Covers

Cling film is one of the easiest things to give up, because there are now so many pleasant alternatives. Beeswax wraps — cotton cloth coated in wax — are brilliant for cheese, cut vegetables, sandwiches and covering a bowl. Warm one slightly in your hands first, so the wax softens and the wrap moulds to whatever you are covering. Wash it in cool water with a little washing-up liquid, let it dry, and it will last a year or more before the wax gives up.

• Keep a stack of beeswax wraps in a drawer, in a few sizes, so there is always one to hand.
• Use lidded containers, or a plate balanced on top of a bowl, instead of stretching film over it.
• Silicone lids and stretchy fabric covers work well on mugs, jugs and leftovers in the fridge.
• For freezing, use lidded boxes and label them with a strip of masking tape and a pencil.

A small stack of wraps and a few lidded boxes will cover almost everything cling film used to do, and they look far nicer in the fridge — a small pleasure worth having.

Build a Shelf of Refillable Jars

Once you start keeping jars rather than recycling them, you will wonder why you ever bought storage containers. Pasta, rice, lentils, flour, oats, nuts and dried fruit all keep better in glass, and being able to see what you have means you are far less likely to buy a third bag of basmati you did not need.

Refill shops have appeared in most market towns and many suburbs, and they let you take your own containers to fill with anything from porridge oats to washing-up liquid. It takes a little forward planning, but the routine is simple: weigh your empty jar at the till, fill it, weigh it again, and pay for the difference.

• Keep a bag of empty jars by the front door, ready for a refill trip.
• Choose wide-necked jars — they are easier to fill, scoop from and wash.
• Label the contents and the date with a paper sticker, or use a chalk pen on the glass.
• Decant your shopping into jars as soon as you get home, so the packaging leaves the house straight away.

Buy Loose Produce Where You Can

Supermarket produce aisles have quietly become a plastic minefield. Buying loose where you can — a handful of carrots, three onions, a couple of peppers — is usually cheaper by weight and lets you take only what you will actually eat. Most larger supermarkets now sell at least some fruit and veg loose, and a local greengrocer or market stall will often beat them on both choice and conversation.

• Keep a few cotton or mesh produce bags in your handbag or coat pocket, so you are never caught out.
• Skip the bag altogether for things with their own wrapping: bananas, onions, garlic and potatoes.
• Buy herbs and salad leaves loose, then wrap them in a damp tea towel in the fridge — they last noticeably longer.
• Ask at the deli and butcher counter for cheese and meat to go into your own container.

Small Everyday Swaps That Add Up

Some of the biggest reductions come from things you buy without thinking. Loose-leaf tea or plastic-free tea bags, ground coffee from a refill rather than pods, and a milk delivery in returnable glass bottles will between them remove a surprising amount of packaging from your weekly shop. If there is a doorstep milk round in your area, it is one of the simplest changes going — the bottles simply go back out on the step, empty.

• Swap plastic sponges for compostable ones made from cellulose or loofah, and use a wooden dish brush with replaceable heads.
• Choose bars of soap and solid dishwashing blocks over bottled liquid where you can.
• Use a lidded box or a beeswax wrap instead of sandwich bags and cling film in lunchboxes.
• Line the bin with a compostable liner, or skip the liner entirely and rinse the bin instead.

Make It Stick Without Making It a Chore

The households that keep this up are rarely the ones with the most elaborate systems. They are the ones who have made the new habit slightly easier than the old one. Put the wraps where the cling film used to live, keep the jars where you can see them, and leave the shopping bags by the door rather than in a cupboard upstairs.

It also helps to be realistic. Nobody manages this perfectly, and a week when you buy a shrink-wrapped cucumber is not a failure. Aim to reduce rather than eliminate, and let each change settle before you add the next one. The cling film drawer will empty itself soon enough — and you almost certainly will not miss it.