Back to School...

It was the first day of the school year today, and this is where I failed at plastic-free living. I reckon at least 50% of the plastic in the sea comes from children, most of it probably my children. Everything they have ever had is plastic. Plastic accumulates the minute you have a baby. Changing mats, nappies (oh, God - the nappies!), vaccinations delivered in a plastic syringe, toys that end up being lost half an hour after you bought them. Really, I can hardly bring myself to think of all those tiny Playmobil croissants, drifting around the Pacific, being ingested by tropical fish...

In general, I'm a pretty tight-fisted parent and try not to buy them too much stuff. Anything they do have usually comes from a charity shop these days because I have finally cottoned on to the idea that buying used is a good way of minimising consumption. (I am late to this particular party, I realise this.)

But anyway, they needed new school uniforms and they needed trainers and lunch bags and all that crap. This is the school uniform:

 

You can't see it very well, but the tags are attached with pieces of plastic.  I bought something like fifteen items, all with plastic bits on them. There are around 400 children in our school. By my maths, that is... Well, I don't know exactly because when I try to add numbers together the air all around me turns grey and I want to die, but whatever, it is a whole lot of plastic bits just from one school.

 

But that is nothing compared to this monstrosity. Trainers for my daughter's PE lessons. Now, strictly speaking, this was not my failure, as I am not the one who bought these. If I had bought them, we'd have gone to a charity shop or some horrible supermarket and picked them up for a fiver. But her dad took her and he thought the law dictates that Every Pair of Children's Shoes in This Country Must Come from Clarks.

 

Anyway, she has taken them to school, so I can't show you the horrendous things themselves (they have a lot of pink and some weird monsters on them) but this is the box:

 

 

Gloforms. I have no idea, but I think they are a special type of trainer, directed particularly at the child consumer. Everything about them is bad. They are really bloody expensive, they have plastic strips on them that glow in the dark and they also have A FUCKING PLASTIC TOY IN THE HEEL.

 





Why does a child need a plastic toy in their shoe? Answer: THEY FUCKING DON'T.

 

And I can't show you the toy because guess what? She's fucking lost it already. This vile piece of completely unnecessary pink flashing plastic is making its way to the Pacific Ocean as we speak, where it will be eaten by a whale and the whale will end up washed up on a beach somewhere and after an autopsy it will be declared on the front page of every eco-magazine in the land that COMPLETELY SHIT PLASTIC TOY FROM CLARKS SHOE FOUND IN STOMACH OF DEAD BLUE WHALE.

 

I cannot bear it.

 

But on the bright side...

 

I bought her a new lunch bag from Boobalou. It contains no plastic. It is brilliant and she loves it.

 

 

She also took her ham roll (veggie ham - God, sorry, I'm so obnoxious) in a reusable baggie instead of clingfilm:

 

 

 

The lunch bag was £12 and the baggie £6. This is unfortunate. I admit that the plastic-free life has required quite an outlay, thus possibly reducing me to the stereotype of the smug, bourgeois environmental activist for whom it is easy to be green. However, it's an investment. The bags will last a while, longer than a roll of cling film. And the trouble with plastic is that we're so dependent on it because it is cheap. Nothing made of plastic costs very much (unless it is marketed by Disney - look at the original price of this crock of absolute shit), but in real terms, in global terms, it is costing us the earth.