Susanne Charlett already used very little plastic in her shop when Watlington Climate Action Group approached her to discuss the Surfers Against Sewage scheme to reduce plastic waste. She was however able to further reduce single-use plastic and now only has some plastic wrap for textile products.
Susanne explains explains “I wanted to do my bit as a business to eliminate as much single-use plastic as possible.”
Stilla Hem has reduced plastic use as follows:
* Greeting cards are now supplied without plastic wrap. This has involved working with four different suppliers. There’s just a small amount of pre-existing stock which still has plastic packaging but all future deliveries will be plastic-free
* Susanne asked her suppliers to send goods with as little plastic packaging as possible. This has worked best with smaller companies. Although they may need to still use plastic packaging for storage in their warehouse this means that the plastic can be recycled at the source and it sends a strong message to suppliers to reduce plastic where they can. The woollen blankets come with a recycled plastic bag which can be reused for storage.
* Susanne has moved from using plastic wrap for packaging things up for customers to corrugated card packaging.
Susanne says that she has seen a change in the way companies package their goods in the last five years. In the past polystyrene packaging was very much the standard, but now there is much greater use of non-plastic packaging options.
“The problem with plastic packaging is much of it is difficult to recycle. The Co-op is great with its soft plastic recycling bin and anything that arrives which can’t be recycled in normal plastic recycling, I take there” adds Susanne.
“If we can all do a little bit to reduce the use of plastics that can only be a good thing.”
If you are interested in helping with our Plastic Free Watlington project please get in touch at watlingtonclimateaction@gmail.com