A month-long environmental challenge is going to be tricky, but the reward – and even the punishment – is for a worthy cause.

Staff at Hikoi Mount Maunganui are taking part in Plastic Free July, which challenges participants to eliminate all single-use plastics in their lives for 30 days (and longer, if they can).

Aodren Le Bras will pick up plastic litter off the beach as part of Plastic Free July. Photo by Bruce Barnard.

This includes shopping bags, cups, straws and packaging – anything that is intended for one use only then discarded.

For every single-use plastic item they do use, however, is a strike against their name and for every piece they must collect 10 pieces of plastic from the beach at the end of the month.

Owner Brad Edwards, and serial gum chewer, admits his daily habit is getting binned for the duration (apparently there is plastic compounds in gum, he says) and tells The Weekend Sun so far it is going well, although he's already suffered a strike against his name for the aforementioned chomp.

'I think it will be a challenging buying stuff without it being wrapped in plastic and also refusing the single use plastic packaging that comes with everything he admits.

'My wife went shopping before the day of the challenge and got yoghurt pottles and all sorts of things, so we'll have to change that - but it's a mark against her not me!” he adds with a laugh.

'I'll be doing next week's shopping, so I won't be able to buy anything in plastic wrapping. I will have to go to the butchers and put all my meat in reusable containers.”

It's changing ingrained behaviours that is the sole aim of Plastic Free July. Approximately 252,000 tonnes of plastic waste is disposed of to our landfills each year.

Hikoi will be keeping followers up to date with their highs and lows throughout the month at https://www.facebook.com/Hikoi.co.nz.

For more information on Plastic Free July or to get yourself involved with the challenge, visit www.plasticfreejuly.org