Living a plastic free life, or with as little single use plastic as possible, it something we should all aspire to achieve. But it can be a daunting task. Where to start? What swaps to do first?

Don't worry, we have all been there! The secret is to take a big breath and focus on one room, or area of your house at a time! So why not start with your kitchen, and aim for a plastic free pantry?

Here are our best tips for making your own plastic free pantry on the cheap!

1. Reuse preloved or used glass jars, remove labels with baking soda and hot water, and use them to storage your plastic free pasta or loose food from a bulk store.

2. Choose a food brand that uses plastic free packaging, or buy in bulk to minimise the amount of plastic food packaging you will have to dispose of.

3. Choose products that are better for the environment. Did you know that most tea bags contain microplastics? Fortunately there are some amazing plastic free tea bags on the market, or you can swap to loose tea leaves. Check out our handmade wooden tea cups that are perfect for plastic free tea!

Zero Waste Kitchen

We've all been there. Cooking too much, serving big portions we cannot finish. Food is left but don't have enough storage containers, space in the fridge or we just don't feel like eating it the following day. It's just a bit of food, what's the harm in throwing it in the bin after all?

Well, the truth is that when billion of people do this every day, the problem becomes terribly serious.

Here are some quite scary facts from FAO  ( Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) about food waste: 

1. More than 1/3 of all food produced globally is wasted every year

2. In the Uk and the USA, over half of all food waste takes place at home

3. Around 14% of the world’s food is lost from the moment it is harvested until it reaches our local supermarkets, so that's even before we had a chance to buy it.

4. For many people on the planet, food is something we take for granted. But there are more than 820 million people who live in hunger around the world, for them food is not a guarantee and wasting it at the level we do is also indicative of the unethical practises in resource distribution.

5.  If food waste were a country, it would be the highest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, behind China and the United States

How to avoid food waste?

There are a lot of things we can all do to become better at stopping food from going to waste.

1. Be mindful of what you buy:  shopping planning is a great way to reduce food waste. When we don't have a shopping list, it is very easy to pick random things from supermarket shelves, which may never turn into recipe ingredients once we are at home.

2. Avoid going food shopping when you are hungry: you will be tempted to buy more and things you don't need.

3. Reducing portion size are great way to start tackling this problem. We can all do it, it's free and it's one of the best way we can make a difference in fighting climate change every day, simply from our kitchens.