One month without plastic - my experiment's results

I want to share with you the conclusions from my plastic free experiment. It was incredible challenging and frustrating, and somehow rewarding on the other hand... and all these days made me think a lot more about consumerism and what is happening in the world. They are my personal experiences and they are not universal. Maybe some people can do it better and feel more positive about it, but personally I feel quite frustrated of the outcome. So here are my CONCLUSIONS:

• it feels like going back to The Middle Ages
  some things I couldn't simply buy without plastic, like the basics: toilet paper, batteries, pencils, essential oils, gas bottles, disinfecting bottles, glue, etc - the small things that make life easier...

• I needed extra time to live in an eco way
  I simply needed to go all around the city for searching a wrapped free product. Literally, I was shopping in 6-7 places, for finding the best solution. If "normal people" would just get their things in a supermarket and that's it, for me there was a hunt. I needed to go to the market, to the fruit shop, the grains shop, the ecological shop, to the bakery, the library and so on. So a lot of more time needed. If you are working 8h per day and you have such a limited free time, you just go to the first hypermarket and finish everything in half an hour. Living plastic free means taking hours and hours shopping...
  The online purchases I was seeing it as an option, but the thing is that I am sure that the products get wrapped in plastic there also when the package is sent. Or maybe I am wrong..
  

• it is way more expensive
  to get milk that comes only in a glass is 4 times more expensive then the normal one. Same for rice, pasta and all cereals in general. I managed to get more then 95% of my food plastic free, but it was at a cost, a quite high one for my budget.
  So the paradox is the fallowing - you need more time and more money to live ECO. But the time is money, So most commonly, if you have lots of free time, this means that you have little money. So mostly, living ECO is a thing for the rich actually... Most of the people on Earth I don't think they even have this privilege to choose what they will have on the table.

• the real change is in the hands of corporations
  I don't write it as a matter of resignation. I write it as a fact. I consume very little. Big companies produce the most trash from them all. So if we want to change the world, I feel we should just get involved into the political legal side also. To change the laws, to make proposals, to find out our rights. To read the researches that are made and to send them to the governments so that they take an initiative. The single effort of the individual indeed matters. Our grain of sand life is important also, but the big change is happening where the big production and the big money are.
  

The POSITIVE SIDE of my experiment is the fallowing:

• i managed to not buy any single plastic bag in 1 month!
  YEY! I am incredible proud of myself for this!!!! Normally, I was getting a few. Because I forgot my cotton ones at home, just for commodity or just saying that anyway, I am gonna recycle them. But this week - NONE!!!! I actually slept over of a friends place and got some plastic bags from him because he had tons :) He was trying also to recycle and had a huge collection.
• more then 90% of my food was not wrapped in plastic!
  all the veggies and the fruits I got from the farmers from the market! All the cereals I got them from a sufi shop, where I was bringing my own bag or jar! So success on this side also!!!
• the people around me started living in the same was!
  Here is the big bonus from them all - my friends were always congratulating me and I even noticed how their behavior changed also! They fallowed my example and in a small scale, they also tried to live plastic free. So my way of shopping became contagious. And this is truly my big award for myself. If I managed to change the consuming behavior of a person, even temporary, it is amazing! If I managed to make somebody a bit more aware and to support them to take actions and not only to think that this commodity pattern can not be changed, then it is absolutely wonderful!

My experiment is over. The month passed so quickly. Of course I will not get back to plastic now and I will continue to do my best (even if I can not reach the perfection) to leave the smallest footprint on Earth as possible.

Lots of Love to all of you! We can make change happen!