Read a guide.

• Friends of the Earth's 'Living Without Plastic'.
• One Green Planet's '10 Life Hacks to Help You Cut Plastic Out The Picture'
• Plastic Free Swindon blogs for the new year, 2019.

Get inspiration and share ideas in a group.

• Sustainable Choices are a Shrivenham-based organisation that put on an excellent hands-on sustainability event in 2019. The group seek to help overcome the barriers to sustainability for those with busy lives.
• Journey to Zero Waste.
• Sustainable(ish) with Jen Gale.
• Plastic Free Pantry.

Challenge yourself!

• Wiltshire Wildlife Trust's Waste Free February
• Plastic Free July
• Go on a plastic diet.

Support considerate businesses and products

• Contact businesses to ask them if they will reduce their plastic use.
• Boycott businesses who are unwilling to alter their plastic use.
• Give companies their plastic back, as we did at Sainsbury's.

Reduce packaging

• If buying online, for many reasons boycott Amazon! They won't share information on their plastic usage. Ensure to buy from a socially and environmentally responsible business. Examples: Bookshop.org and Ethical Shop.
• Support the Refill scheme to reduce plastic water bottles, personally and / or as a business. It now includes food and other shopping.
• Buy local or from a market.
• Wiltshire Wildlife Trust's Real Nappy Network aims to help reduce the 8 million nappies that are thrown away each day. The scheme is good for the environment and good financially, with estimated savings of up to £500 per child.
• Make your own products. There are a huge number of resources available on the internet.
• Grow your own food. It requires no packaging. Fresh, local, organic food is beneficial in a great many respects. See the links section for related local groups.
• Buy wholefoods. It often costs less and is healthier than processed foods.

Buy good quality products designed to last.

• Disreputable companies use built-in / planned obsolescence to reduce the lifespan of products and increase profits. Research companies and products well.
• 'Programmed obsolescence is one of the malicious functionalities that may be designed into proprietary software. Computer technology inevitably has an environmental impact, but proprietary software makes it worse because it is often designed to lead or pressure users to discard devices sooner because support for them has ceased, or to discard defective hardware which could have been made repairable.'- The Free Software Foundation

Use better materials

• Compostable carrier and dog poo bags. Don't mix them up!
• How is something made? What is it made from? Vital questions to ask. Choose natural materials free from nasty synthetic chemicals such as FSC certified (sustainable forestry) paper and wood. For example; chips in paper or food in a reusable container.
• Carry a reusable container for take-away food. Ask for sustainable packaging. Paper for chips instead of polystyrene, for example.

Share

• Join or start a toy library. They can reduce our carbon footprints in many ways including a reduction in plastic. A toy libarary recently started in Wootton Bassett. They used to be more common; there used to be one at Eastcott Community Centre, for example.
• Why buy when you can borrow? Introducing the Library of Things.
• Hire instead of buying.
• Lend to or borrow from a friend, family member, neighbour...

• Renew Swindon are an organisation who refurbish and repair, teaching valuable skills, and providing a friendly space to commune. It includes the Men's Shed in Penhill, which is open to all, part of the UK Men's Shed Association.
• Repair Cafes have sprung up around the world in the last few years. Items are repaired for free with demonstrations so that people learn and pass on new skills. Swindon is blessed with a Repair Cafe and Free Shop, a very popular community event with local live music, food and a good atmosphere. Interestingly, the free shop in Swindon came about, in part, because of Food Not Bombs.
• There are local craft groups to learn and hone skills such as Knit and Natter and Swindon Big Knit.
• Swindon Makerspace has excellent facilities to repair all kinds of items.
• There are vast amount of online guides to repairing all kinds of items.

Buy / donate second hand.

• Support local charity shops. Read Carmen Browne's article on supporting second hand.
• Buy from a clothes fair such as Lou Lou's Vintage Fair.
• Fight fast fashion with Worth the Wait.

Create

• Join a local art group who reuse materials such as Artsite or Ipsum.
• Make ecobricks, building blocks made from reused plastic-filled bottles.
• There are a huge amount of online resources for upcycling all kinds of items. Pinterest, for example.

• The borough council collect plastic for recycling. See their recycling guide for details of what is and isn't recycled.
• Wiltshire Air Ambulance work with Terracycle to recycle commonly used types of plastic packaging.

• Contact your MP. Ask them to implement the strong legislation that is needed. See our government section for further info.
• Share information with friends and family. Encourage them to make changes.
• Find a positive aspect to tackle plastic pollution such as creating a blog, making some art, handing out leaflets... The list's as long as your imagination.
• Get involved with Plastic Free Swindon!