Plastic Free Breakfast Cereal

Before January I would always have a stash of porridge sachets in my desk at work ready for my breakfast every morning with a hot cup of coffee.  I thought these were a good plastic free alternative the box is cardboard and the sachets appeared to be paper.  However I have since messaged Quaker Oats and they let me know they are not. 

"Our Oat So Simple sachets are currently made of paper, with a plastic lining which enables the sachet to hold liquid during preparation. For this reason they are not recyclable" 

Quaker Oats Uk March 2019)

Since starting my plastic free journey I figured I could look to remove the little sachets from my morning routine and find an alternative.  This move was motivated by reducing waste as I had thought the sachets where plastic fee.  I now buy a large bag of oats from Aldi in a paper bag and store them in a large air-tight glass jar.  Each morning, while putting together my lunch, I also fill a small container with about 40g of oats.  I take two filled containers into work at the beginning of the week to allow me some slack if I forget one of a morning.  I find the oats are exactly the same, I give them 2 mins in the microwave with water and then just add a dash of milk.  Perfect. 

At home cereal has proven a little harder especially with the children.  I spent some time studying the cereal boxes at the supermarket to discover Shredded Wheat is one of the only ones I could find with no plastic packaging.  However, even though it is paper and recyclable, the individual packaging on pairs of shredded wheat seems unnecessary and wasteful.

My findings (where the boxes choose to tell you) were:

Disappointingly most of them, even wholesome/"Hipster" looking cereals, have a nice little plastic window or bag inside!

Cherrios are in a cardboard box (great) with a plastic bag (not so great).  These plastic bags can however be recycled at the plastic bag recycling point at most larger supermarkets (a great little find while on this journey). 

Shredded Wheat are completely cardboard and paper based so recyclable at home (which is why this is now our forced cereal of choice.)

Weetabix are in a cardboard box but the paper on the inside is "not yet recycled".  This puzzled me as it looked and felt like paper, so I emailed Weetabix to find out what it was made of and why it couldn't be recycled when Shredded Wheat's can be. Their reply is copied below:

"Thank you for contacting us regarding our packaging. We take our responsibilities for the environmental impact of our activities seriously and have worked hard to reach the point where 94% of our packaging is currently recyclable. 
The paper used in our inner wrap is from a sustainable source and has been treated to provide the necessary product protection, meaning that it is not currently suitable for recycling. Please be assured that we have an active packaging innovation programme, balancing environmental performance against product shelf-life.  Kind Regards,Consumer Service Team"

Watch out for all this treated and plastic lined paper, it looks so harmless however, if it can not even be recycled it has to end up in landfill.