Want a plastic-free shave but wary of using a metal one? It's an easier switch than you think.

To be perfectly honest with you, I had wanted to switch to a plastic-free shave for years, but I always found an excuse.

I always justified yet another plastic razor with excuses like 'I'll only cut myself with a real one' or 'plastic razors must be better' I just don't have the time or energy to figure it out'. I always found yet another reason to avoid a metal razor and stick with the familiarity of a plastic one.

I guess that is true of many things, isn't it? We stick with what is familiar. We don't really like change, no matter how much we think we might and we stick with the same-old, simply out of habit and without much thought at all.

I dread to think how many additional plastic razors I have added to landfill in the years that I've been rationalising my need to keep using them. It was when I stopped to ponder this that I realised that I needed to bite the bullet and go for it.

Before we dive into the practicalities of using a reusable razor, I want to share with you some facts and figures that definitely contributed to me ditching the excuses and the plastic disposable razor.

I had never fully considered the bigger picture. Not really. We had all seen the headlines about how bad plastic straws and carrier bags are, but in reality, disposable razors are not really all that different except we don't really hear about them too often.

In May 2020, the Independent published an article about the problem with disposable razors. In it, they claimed that in 2018, 5.5 million people in the UK were using plastic razors. With most people using between 1 and 2 razors every 2 months, that equates to between 33 million and 66 million razors heading to landfill every year in the UK alone.

That is a lot of plastic headed to landfill and that is before you add in all of the unnecessary plastic waste that it comes wrapped in.

In 1999, the global disposable razor market was estimated to be worth around $18billion and is projected to be worth around $22.5 billion by 2020 and unless we demand change by ditching the disposables, things are unlikely to change. And let's face it, when the market is worth such significant figures, the industry is unlikely to become more sustainable by its own volition.