Over the weekend it was my mam’s birthday and to keep in touch with my challenge as well as getting her something she would enjoy, I bought her a sodastream. This is an appliance that allows you to add carbonation to your water. I did this in the hope that we would reduce the amount of plastic bottles we were purchasing for fizzy water and it worked! Now she is able to make her own fizzy water from our tap water rather than buying countless amounts of bottles.

My challenge has slowly started taking a toll on me as anytime I’m shopping, it now takes much longer to try and find a product without plastic packaging, like my milky bar with paper wrapping. Although it is very time consuming I do believe that it’s all still for a great cause and has hopefully already influenced others to do something similar.

As I’ve progressed through my challenge it has gotten harder, however I talked with my mam who is no trying to also decrease her plastic usage when shopping for the family. We now have more loose items in the house rather than packaged things, like carrots, broccoli and bananas. This has really helped me to keep driving forward with the challenge and proven to me that my small change has already had a positive impact on others.

So far my challenge has gone to plan. I have been faced a few close calls with plastic usage like when I had to stop myself buying a packet of jellies just because I was hungry. I have also made some changes around mine and my families lives, for example whenever my mam or dad go out for some milk we now get the cartons of milk as opposed to the plastic bottles. I have also invested in some re-usable face masks to avoiding only one-use masks. I’m excited to see whats to come in the new week!

My sustainability challenge is to use more re-usable things and to cut back on any one-use plastic. So far it is going well; I bought myself a reusable bottle as opposed to buying plastic bottles of water. In doing this small change to my life I hope it can encourage others around me to do something similar and to then create a big change.