To ask how much plastic we could ban?

[TheABC]

Consumer pressure will only go so far with the shops as long as it's cheaper to wrap in plastic and they don't pick up the tab for the environmental impact. I am beginning to think the only way to really solve the problem is to ban the majority of plastic packaging (including the amount used in the supply chain!) and phase it in gradually to allow for the changeover and price headaches. We did it with plastic bags and microbeads. We need to be more ambitious as recycling barely touched the sides of the issue.

The problem is that banning all single use plastic will increase food waste. The issue is that plastic needs to be used more intelligently and consumers need to be prepared for food prices to rise, which is fine for the middle classes, but not for people in very low incomes.

Detergents in plastic bottles, we used to have just washing powder in boxes,

You can still buy powder in boxes. Picked up our latest box of daz, today. £8 for 80 washes. Not only cheaper than pretty tablets or gels, but it cleans better.

Red Noses! I've been moaning to my children about them for years... such a bloody waste. Give to charity, don't fuck up the earth even further!

Someone should invent recyclable pods for coffee machines.
I had to buy a French press and stop using my machine as I genuinely felt guilty at the amount of plastic I was going through!

Definitely Happy Meals tat would be first on a ban list for me. Actually the whole of MacDonalds would be, given that mass meat production is doing a lot to harm the planet and encouraging the development of anti-B resistant super-bugs.

I'd like to shut down all the materialism YouTubers in the UK and US who disseminate publicity for plastic products like squishies, slime, plastic collectables.... I hate all the creepy fathers who seem to mastermind everything they put out.

Other than that, I would want all film to be starch-based, not just that used for organic fruit and veg (they buyers of which can presumably afford the extra expense).

think fruit and veg needs to be the first thing to ban plastic from. There is literally NO NEED of it.

Apart from keeping the moisture in so it doesn't turn to rubber in a day

N’espèresso sent me a bag to put my pods in with my last order to send the old ones back for recycling. There is a new coffee pod supplier called Halo that for n’espèresso which are supposed to be recyclable. Will get those next time I need some.

McDonald’s sell 1.2 billion happy meals a year with a plastic toy that is pretty much a throw away item. Makes you think.

I keep meaning to buy these for produce at supermarket but keep forgetting

reusable bags

Funnily in the U.K. and Canada without fail I used my reusable bags at the store. Heee in the US I don’t, I keep forgetting and have done so for 5yrs!! Will put them in the car this week ready for the next shop.

Reduce, reuse, recycle is the message to follow. Not banning plastic. It's a perfectly good material but just needs better infrastructure at the back end. The packaging reform is working on this and by 2022 will be operational (although it'll take time for the tax generated to be available for better resources for recycling and waste management). Corn/potato starch bags are a great alternative in theory but incredibly expensive to produce and mainly go to incinerators and are not composted. There are other alternatives out there, but again, this will mean an increase in costs. The better option is to recycle. With the cucumber wrapper, it was proven to extend the shelf life of the produce and therefore markedly reduce food waste. Banning plastic could have detrimental effects in other areas (e.g. carbon footprint by transporting new types of material; by using a paper bag which is thicker and bulkier than a plastic bag; food wastage, etc).

There’s already a consultation out that if introduced will increase the financial impact of packaging by significant amts for the retailer.

Is there a solution that doesn't just ban things but finds alternatives?

I've often thought there should be a law that says that if anyone sells you anything, you're allowed to either;

Take off the packaging and leave it there (I nearly always do that with shoe boxes)

or

Take back the packaging back to them for them to dispose of.

It would definitely be another disadvantage for bricks and mortar retailers though.

@lifebeginsnow

My favourite one is refuse. I think then there's repurpose and then the three you mentioned.

I only learnt those two recently myself.

The whole problem is just so complex. You think you are doing a good thing and then find out it has other knock on, unseen effects.

rightly off topic but does anyone know anything about carbon offsetting? I can't avoid my commute at the moment and I feel guilty i can't find out Much about it, hence asking.

@RoseMartha

I have a toothbrush I bought in the 80's, I think in England but may have been Israel, which came with a spare head. It is entirely possible to manufacture these. (Just to add, I bought it as a travel toothbrush, haven't been using it all that time, it just got packed away).

As for the Body Shop, it was reasonably priced in the days of refillable bottles which I think they called them, then it lost the plot and was no longer ethical in many ways. They should really have been called returnable bottles. You haven't missed anything by not shopping there.

@DontCallMeShitley thats good. Shame we dont see this option on the shelf now.

PickAChew Re: Detergents in plastic bottles, we used to have just washing powder in boxes,

You can still buy powder in boxes. Picked up our latest box of daz, today. £8 for 80 washes. Not only cheaper than pretty tablets or gels, but it cleans better.

I know you can still buy powder in boxes, in fact I do buy it, but what I meant by just washing powder in boxes was that it was the only option, there were no plastic bottles of liquid available, not to mention all the foul artificial flowery smells that add to pollution.

We maybe need to go back a little further than supermarkets to ban plastic. I was horrified when watching Simon Reeves' Mediterranean programme when he visited the plastic greenhouses in Almeria. Not only the plastic waste but the exploitation of the workers too.

As a result I've stopped buying Spanish greenhouse produce.

@RoseMartha my local wholefood shop does shampoo refills, along with washing up liquid, toilet cleaner, kitchen surface cleaner etc.

Also Lush do shampoo bars which can be kept in one of their metal tins. I've got an amazing blue one for fuller body which I've been using every day since Christmas and it's still going strong.

It's really complex - changing packaging will actually increase emissions in many cases (transporting glass is way heavier than plastic), and the real emergency for the time being is carbon emissions. Just as shrink wrapped food lasts longer - wasting one piece of food because it hasn't been wrapped properly is way worse than a bit of plastic.

Many plastics are waste products from heavier industrial practices so will still need disposal. We do need to reduce but the focus for the time being needs to be disposing of plastic correctly.

In our county all refuse gets burnt for electricity - not a long term ideal solution but for now, the best there is.

There was a whole episode of'Costing the Earth' on Radio 4 about this.

I did see something on FB yesterday that a primary school had written to comic relief asking them to ban red noses and instead have a paint your own nose red day and donate the money to the charity in full. David Attenborough had written to the children to say well done (so the FB post said anyway!) But comic relief sent a very wishy-washy reply

This link on dental product recycling (London based) is very interesting.
www.bowlanedental.com/toothbrush-recycle/

Recycle your respiratory/asthma inhalers - Complete the Cycle
uk.gsk.com/en-gb/responsibility/our-planet/complete-the-cycle/

Contact lens (or just wear spectacles) blister packs & foil covers recycling
www.terracycle.co.uk/en-GB/brigades/acuvue

Where they can, manufactures need to stop individually wrapping products that are already in packaging - for example I bought a pack of 4 cleaning cloths the other day and within the packet each individual cloth was in its own plastic wrapping. I refuse to believe there is a functional reason for that (I assume it was to keep each cloth nicely folded and the pack looking neat from the outside, but I don’t know anyone who gives two shits about how nicely folded their cleaning cloths look in the packet!)

Don’t buy veggies in plastic but drive to the shops in the first place!
There is no answer really.

Just as shrink wrapped food lasts longer - wasting one piece of food because it hasn't been wrapped properly is way worse than a bit of plastic.

How is food waste worse than plastic? Food decomposes. Plastic is around for hundreds of years.