My Carbon Footprint: Sorry, not sorry

I’m sorry.” It’s surely one of the most British phrases out there and I seem to be saying it a lot this week.

I’m sorry we’re a bit difficult, a bit different, that it’s a bit awkward to think of something to bring to our daughter’s birthday party this weekend (rock climbing and a picnic) that isn’t plastic-free.

No, not in any form. Yes, that does include sequins on birthday cards – especially the ones “for girls”. (Probably best not to start that emotive chat on a wet Saturday afternoon when we all know we’re only here for the weekend childcare.)

And that shiny wrapping paper won’t go in the compost either so, er, let’s just leave it shall we?

No, no don’t worry about bringing anything for the picnic, though thanks very much for offering. Much easier for you that way after all.

Yes, it’s totally our problem, not yours. I know, what a nightmare, right?

Suddenly, it occurs to me that what I’m actually apologising for isn’t the slightly awkward reality of every kids’ party we’ve ever thrown or attended as a zero-waste, plant-based, secondhand-everything family.

I’m preempting the circumstances in which the other kids’ parents or carers are offended by us being environmentalists. That’s not unnecessary anxiety; it happens all the time. Check the comments below any sustainability column anyone has ever written for proof.

I’m sorry our attempts to do better over here offend you so severely over there. I’m sorry our determination to change the way we consume in a desperate bid to avoid the catastrophe we are bringing down on ourselves at an ever-increasing rate makes you feel a bit… unsettled.

I don’t mean it though. And this time around I’m not going to paint on a fixed smile when someone decides they know better, that it’s only a bit of plastic, that the polystyrene is only in that bit of the packaging. From now on I’m calling out the complicity.

I don’t know why the universal truths of man-made climate change and biodiversity loss are met with such extreme, personal responses. But you do get good at sidestepping the conflict and downright aggression.

My strategy to date has been to present our position as a bit bonkers, painful, often hilariously pointless and definitely, absolutely, no threat to anyone else’s way of life.

It’s funny that we environmentalists feel the constant need to diffuse, because everybody else apparently thinks we’re fair game. Like Monday, when a close family member informed us we were doing our children a “gross disservice” because we don’t fly to family holidays. I nearly spat out my tea.

Or last Thursday when I asked for the plant-based menu our local pub has just launched to much fanfare and the waiter disappeared into the kitchen yelling he couldn’t stand how all these idiots were pushing their “eco bull***t” on the rest of us and how dare they interfere with his human rights. Wow.

The irony of it isn’t lost on us. We – my softly-spoken husband, our eight-year-old daughter, five-year-old son and I, that is – are unlikely to prevent those so-called “rights” but environmental catastrophe sure will, if it isn’t doing so already.

So I’m done with the apologies, especially when it comes to our zero tolerance of plastic at our daughter’s birthday party this weekend.

The last extensive, peer-reviewed study into the plastic pollution of our own bodies, recently released by Amsterdam’s Free University, showed 36 per cent of us have polystyrene in our blood.

Polyethylene – think food packaging and supermarket carrier bags – is now present in the blood of a quarter of us. And PET plastic, the material of choice for soft drinks, water and juice bottles, is found in half of us, including the kids we’re due to entertain on Saturday.

None of this should come as a surprise of course. Nor should the dire warnings from researchers about the retention of nanoplastic particles in our organs. Endocrine disruptor anyone?

It’s enough to put anyone right off all that plastic-encased food for starters, no matter how widely its found at kids’ birthday picnics. It sure as hell won’t be found at ours, and no, I’m certainly not sorry about it.

‘Going Zero: One Family’s Journey to Zero Waste and a Greener Life’, by Kate Hughes, is out now