Meet the Bristol woman helping others cut down on their plastic usage

Joanna Poulton, a production coordinator and founder of Waste Not Bristol has always been passionate about the environment. But it’s been the experience of living on a canal boat  at Redcliffe Wharf that has really made her aware of the issue of single-use plastic pollution that affects Bristol.

Whilst the live-aboard lifestyle might be idyllic, it has also shown Joanna the volume of plastic that goes into our waterways and that ultimately finds its way to the Bristol Channel. She says that after Friday and Saturday nights she sees the highest volume of materials floating past her: plastic bottles, styrofoam boxes and takeaway wrappers from the night before.

Joanna lives on a canal boat and sees firsthand the amount of plastic waste dumped into Bristol’s waterways

All of this has spurred her to be very careful about the impact she has on the surrounding water that she lives on. Joanna does all she can to use reusable items, including making her own beeswax wraps as a replacement for cling-film and refilling her washing up liquid bottle to avoid throwing the empty plastic bottle away each time. Bristol’s new crop of zero-waste shops, such as as Zero Green in Bedminster, Preserve on Gloucester Road and Wild Oats in Clifton, offer this service.

Joanna is also really careful about what she put down the drain and back into the water supply. “I’m using all-natural products,” she told Bristol24/7. “Everything has to be eco-friendly and biodegradable.”

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However, she has noticed that this way of life comes with a hefty price tag in comparison to buying more plastic replacements from supermarkets. She began to realise that living sustainably may not be possible for everyone, even if they do want to ditch the single-use plastics and reach for the reusables.

“Some people might be fortunate enough to be able to buy a £5 organic reusable tote bag, but for others a 5p plastic bag might be the only affordable way for them to get their shopping home,” Joanna says. “I had to do something about this.”

Joanna started Waste Not Bristol in 2017, and started contacting brands to form eco starter kits for people who want to cut down their plastic usage but couldn’t afford to. The starter kits contain an organic tote bag, a bamboo toothbrush, charcoal tooth powder in a reusable glass tub, solid soap offcuts that avoid harsh chemicals and plastic packaging, and a stainless steel water bottle from fellow local environmental organisation City to Sea.

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To see if her starter kits would be a success, she used her own savings to buy the first lot of sample products. She made up 20 kits and donated them to Refugee Women of Bristol after doing a talk there on sustainable living. They proved so popular that Joanna was moved to start making her kits on a bigger scale.

“I’ve always wanted to get involved in environmental activism, but I’ve always found myself in the media world,” she says. “Now I feel like I am fulfilling my personality by doing this campaign.” She is currently crowdfunding to make up 400 starter kits, which she hopes to donate to three local charities: Refugee Women of Bristol, homeless charity St. Mungo’s and Creative Youth Network.

In the future, she hopes that Waste Not Bristol could become a charity so that she can continue her mission to help more people cut down on their use of plastic.

Joanna is aiming to raise £7,000 before December 20 to create 400 kits. Donate by visiting www.chuffed.org/project/waste-not-bristol-charity-eco-kits