Lotus wrote:With the War on Plastic™ well and truly underway, I'm curious whether people genuinely care about it and if they're changing their habits or not. Lots of people are crying on social media about it, but that's different to actually making a change.
With companies pledging to reduce plastic packaging and plastic use, or vowing to make their plastic products recyclable, or switching to non-plastic alternatives, what about the consumer? Are you concerned about the volume of plastic being produced/used/polluting the environment? Have you taken steps to reduce how much you use? If so, how? If not, why not?
Personally I think a chunk of the environmental issue (polluting oceans, mainly) could be sorted by better waste management and recycling processes, i.e. stopping the plastic getting into waterways in the first place. A huge amount of the plastic in the oceans come from developing countries with no recycling infrastructure or waste management structure. Tackling that would go a huge way to helping, not just developing new types of plastic or cutting it down (because even then plastic from these countries is going to end up in the same place if nothing's done to address it).
I'm all for using renewable, recyclable materials though, and so as long as enough thought is being put into these new products and processes, and we're looking ahead enough to avoid creating problems for ourselves in the future, then it's good in my books. I've long thought that the single-use plastics and excessive packing side of things is a joke, and so it'll be good to see that tackled. It's only when you actively try and start reducing your own personal use of it though that you realise how prevalent is in and how difficult it can be to avoid it (a bit like sugar in foods - it's everywhere).
Thoughts?
I like to think I've been cutting back for a long time now. However, there is only so much you can do due to the ridiculous amounts of plastic supermarket use for packaging. gooseberry fool like broccoli wrapped in plastic? Completely ridiculous. I normally buy loose carrots, tomatoes and other veg. I have also not used a plastic bag for a long, long time and have a collection of tote bags for supermarket use. I never get take away coffee and have a reusable water bottle that collapses so I can take it around. I have no shame asking a shop to fill my water though, which I think is a problem for a lot of people so they end up buying more plastic bottles.
It's good that the UK has finally started to use the plastic bottle return scheme as it's pretty cool (no idea why it's taken so long). Plus, if you are so lazy you can't be bothered to go to a supermarket to return them, here in Germany they are left for the homeless folk to get some extra cash. Waste management needs to improve for sure, especially since China has stopped being our rubbish bin. Things like plastic cling film and packaging aren't collected by all local authorities. Also, there is clear confusion about what people know they can recycle, so the plastic they think can be recycled just ends up on a landfill anyway. Also some stuff needs to be rinsed first, which people can't be bothered to do. The 5p cost to shopping bags has also decreased the number of single use plastic bags used.
It's certainly a concern, and whilst not as horrendous as some places in Asia, the amount of plastic packaging litter on the streets/beaches is pretty terrible in Europe.
