Plastic reduction, the first in an occasional series

I'm popping up to talk plastic. You may or may not know that Penzance has recently been granted "plastic free" status as a town - which means we are all rethinking each bit of single use plastic we come into contact with and looking for alternatives now, not when legislation catches up.

It's garnered some great publicity for the town and most importantly, I've had no less than 14 emails this last week asking me about how we pack things, which is just fabulous! So I thought I'd write up our policy for all to see here and get some more eyes on the subject to see how we can improve.

So, postage and packing - we use cardboard boxes now to send parcels in, they may contain recyclable bubble wrap on jars and packing peanuts that are made of cornstarch so are actually edible in case wildlife get to them at some point, but they're very biodegradable. We may send things out in recycled plastic bags, but we're phasing these out, I'm not buying any more. We also collect packaging materials from five other shops in town to stop it going into landfill - so you MIGHT get packing peanuts that aren't cornstarch, or airbags that aren't recycled or bubble wrap that isn't biodegradable. This hurts my heart, but at least they're being used a second time. You may also get a box that an electrician friend brings us that used to contain fairy lights, I promise even I can't have that many lights in the shop! I've got to find an alternative to the plastic tape as well, but I've not done that yet - if anyone's got any ideas about that, I'm all ears.

Then we come to products, yes, we need to do something about bottles. I've got some ideas and this year, you're going to see some changes, I'm talking to suppliers now. But there are other things we're going to change - the next lot of Washable Cleansing Pads will be presented in paper bags for example. We're phasing out the Bath Shots as they're plastic. We're searching for new brush suppliers as they're presented in individual plastic bags.

Everything that we formulate this year (and the list of new things is HOOGE, you've given us heaps of ideas) will be done with the plastic-free ideal in mind - think solid moisturisers, some great new balms and some new soaps too.

I think that covers where we're up to right now, but please, if you can think of any way we can improve, then let us know, the more eyes we get on this, the better.