Plastic reduction

[witch]

Me too. We have just had an M&S food open in the village and on the first day they were giving out free bags. Free PLASTIC bags. I did complain and was told that they were made from recycled plastic and were themselves recyclable. I pointed out that that wasnt really good enough and why not give out hemp or heavy duty paper bags. I got gawped at

 

It's so weird though - there is the USA using paper bags (with no handles though, which is odd) but they cut up fruit and veg and put it on plastic trays and cover it in plastic. Sometimes they dont even cut it up, just wrap up one banana or kiwi or whatever

[Norphy]

Are paper bags actually any better for the environment though? This is quiet an interesting article:

 

https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/paper-plastic.htm

 

The conclusion of the article seems to be that neither are any better than the other and both should be avoided.

[difinity]

This is excellent news - I've been saying for AGES how if places like Primark can use paper bags, why aren't they more widespread?

 

Money/profit, paper bags cost more to produce, transport and you get less in the same storage space.

 

There are environmental downsides to paper bags though. Twenty times more water is required to make them and about four times as much power. If they aren't recycled they produce methane when breaking down.

[LeMarchand]

Excellent! I am the one that takes the paper mushroom bags in preference to the plastic vegetable bags

 

LOL Me too.

 

Me too.

 

Thieves!

 

[TTG_Alice]

Use one of the fruit&veg cardboard boxes in your trolley. Easy to pack in the trolley and just have to move one box into the boot of your car. No extra plastic bags needed

[AMLinington]

Use one of the fruit&veg cardboard boxes in your trolley. Easy to pack in the trolley and just have to move one box into the boot of your car. No extra plastic bags needed

 

That's a good plan - I already do this for Cat food and Yoghurts (Loose Muller Lights).

 

As for Paper bags not being great for the environment - it is true that they aren't great resource-wise, but they can at least be put into recycling, or you can use the paper for other purposes around the home - we regularly recycle the paper from Primark bags or the paper packaging Amazon use to line the rabbit hutches, or we roll it up and keep it in the shed to use when decorating to protect surfaces - it's got tonnes more uses than a plastic bag.

[elsiegee40]

I have started looking at the outer wrappings when I buy tinned food.

 

Some multi packs are wrapped in card - fine that’s recyclable, but some are shrink wrapped in plastic.

 

So I am now buying individual tinned chopped tomato cans rather than a shrink wrapped 4 pack. In a similar vein, I am buying loose lemons and onions rather than getting those net bags.

[gshaw]

I have started looking at the outer wrappings when I buy tinned food.

 

Some multi packs are wrapped in card - fine that’s recyclable, but some are shrink wrapped in plastic.

 

So I am now buying individual tinned chopped tomato cans rather than a shrink wrapped 4 pack. In a similar vein, I am buying loose lemons and onions rather than getting those net bags.

May be good for the environment but bad for your wallet... I recall reading an article recently where the loose items were priced to be much more expensive than the plastic wrapped multi item version.

[Norphy]

Depends on the item. Onions are a lot cheaper loose, as are mushrooms. The other advantage of buying loose is that you can buy as much as you want or need rather than buying as much as the supermarkets want you to buy. This generally means that I don’t waste so much food.

 

This is why I don’t like buying veg in ALDI and Lidl, most of what they sell is prepackaged.

[Andrew_C]

 

This is why I don’t like buying veg in ALDI and Lidl, most of what they sell is prepackaged.

We don't buy Aldi fruit as it rots before it gets eaten.

[witch]

We don't buy Aldi fruit as it rots before it gets eaten.

 

Supermarket fruit and veg seems to last almost forever, which really worries me. If you get the opportunity to have fresh veg that someone has grown, it is quite interesting to see how quickly it all goes past its best.

Whereas a tesco lettuce can last for weeks.

This has always worried me - what are they doing to preserve it?

 

As for price - carrots and potatoes were cheaper in plastic than out of it yesterday in ASDA

[Arthur]

Modern life would be impossible without plastic – but we have long since lost control over our invention. Why has plastic turned into a problem and what do we know about its dangers?

 

This video is a collaboration with UN Environment and their Clean Seas campaign, If you want to take action to turn the tide on plastics, go to http://www.cleanseas.org and make your pledge.

 

We also partnered with AskScience on Reddit - you can talk to experts and ask questions about about plastic pollution today!

 

[Arthur]

 

The Recycling Game Is Rigged Against You

 

Even if you put everything into the right blue bins, a lot of plastics will end up in landfills and the ocean. Consumers can't solve this problem.

 

... Even before China stopped accepting plastic refuse from abroad, 91 percent of potentially recyclable plastic in the U.S. ended up in landfills – or worse, in the oceans. Europe does a little better, with only 70 percent getting tossed.

 

Why such terrible rates? Partly because some changes that were supposed to make recycling simpler ended up making it almost impossible.

 

University of Georgia engineering professor Jenna Jambeck said that indeed, part of the reason China is now refusing to process American and European plastic is that so many people tossed waste into the wrong bin, resulting in a contaminated mix difficult or impossible to recycle.

 

In a paper published last week in Science Advances, she and her colleagues calculated that between now and 2030, 111 million metric tons of potentially recyclable plastic will be diverted from Chinese plants into landfills.

 

Jambeck said that China used to turn a profit by importing the stuff from American and European recycling bins and turning it into useful material. But as other countries attempted to simplify things for consumers with “single stream” recycling – think of one big blue bin for paper, plastic, metal and glass – the material reaching China became too contaminated with nonrecyclable items. The instructions to put everything in one bin seemed appealing but made it much easier to do recycling wrong.

 

[...]

 

Given what scientists already know how to do, the future could bring a greener, more fool-proof system. Right now, she said, she and other scientists are starting to develop ways to recycle mixtures of plastics – a tough job because many plastics repel one another like oil and water. One of the reasons China imported recycling was that it was possible there to hire cheap labor to sort the different plastic types by hand. (Worth noting: Over that same span in which recycling streams have become more contaminated, labor in China has also become scarcer and more expensive.)

 

Another problem is that nearly all current “recyclable” plastics can’t go back into packaging but get a second life as a handbag or lawn chair before settling into landfills as their final resting place. They’re not really recycled so much as “downcycled.” The other author of the Science paper, Jamie Garcia of IBM Research, has invented a new kind of plastic, which can be recycled back into the same kinds of containers hundreds of times. Adopting such a material would require a new approach at recycling facilities, and in the short term could cost more.

 

Curing the plastic problem is a lot like fighting cancer. Even if everyone stopped smoking, there would still be cancer. And even if we all figure out whether our municipalities accept yogurt containers, plastic waste will still pollute the environment. Compliance won't be a cure until innovations from the lab set us up for success.

[AMLinington]

We don't buy Aldi fruit as it rots before it gets eaten.

 

Same with Asda and Sainsburys. I tend to find that Morrisons fresh fruit and veg lasts the longest.

[Arthur]

 

[Arthur]

Plastic bag charge to rise to 10p and be extended to every shop

 

The plastic bag charge is set to rise to 10p and be extended to every shop, according to reports.

 

Theresa May is expected to announce the changes as part of plans to tackle plastic pollution, The Daily Telegraph reported. Currently shops that employ more than 250 people have to charge at least 5p per bag.

 

Under the new measures, the fee would double to 10p and include all retailers.

 

Disposable carrier bags issued by the seven biggest supermarket chains have declined by 86 per cent since the charge was introduced in 2015, official figures showed.

 

Donations from the bag levy to good causes amounted to over £58.5m, based on figures from two-thirds of the retailers who voluntarily reported the information.

 

Ministers also previously announced an intention to ban the sale of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds and plans for a deposit return scheme to increase recycling rates of drinks bottles and cans.

 

Earlier this year government scientists found the number of plastic bags found on the seabed around the UK had plummeted, suggesting efforts to combat plastic pollution was working.

 

Researchers compiled data on 25 years’ worth of plastic trawled from the bottom of the sea to examine litter trends in the waters surrounding the UK.

 

The findings were based on the analysis of nearly 2500 ocean trawls conducted by ships between 1992 and 2017.

[FN-GM]

Plastic bag charge to rise to 10p and be extended to every shop

 

Shops should offer old cardboard boxes to pack items in. This would further reduce plastic bag usage and the boxes can be recycled. Aldi used to do it years ago, I don't think they do anymore though.

[Andrew_C]

Shops should offer old cardboard boxes to pack items in. This would further reduce plastic bag usage and the boxes can be recycled. Aldi used to do it years ago, I don't think they do anymore though.

ALL shops did it years ago!

[hardtailstar]

Plastic bag charge to rise to 10p and be extended to every shop

All my local shops charge 10p already.

[witch]

I asked in Tesco why they dont provide cardboard boxes like they used to. it is a space issue for them - they dont have the room at the end of the tills to safely store the boxes and nowhere else to put them. If you find an amenable shop they will sometimes let you take a couple of flattened out boxes.

TBH when you see all those metal cages swathed in plastic you wonder why we even bother to try to reduce plastic use

[AMLinington]

When I was a kid there was a Gateway in the village - they used to offer cardboard boxes, then when Netto was a thing, they ONLY offered cardboard boxes for a long time.

 

I don't understand why UK supermarkets don't use paper grocery bags like they have in America - surely it can't be a cost thing if a country as huge and populous as America pretty much have them as standard?

 

Primark use paper bags too - PRIMARK of all places. I've said it before and I'll say it again - if shops as diverse as Primark and Monsoon can offer paper bags, then why is it such an issue for all the other high street chains - M&S and John Lewis should be ashamed of themselves - I remember a time when John Lewis (back when it was Tyrrell & Greens) used to have small paper bags. WHSmith used to as well. Paper bags are excellent and could be sustainably sourced and made using a high % of recycled cardboard - I've seen the cardboard compactors in the warehouses of major supermarkets *cough*looking at you ASDA*cough* - I kid you not - those things are monstrous and absolutely stacked out with cardboard - how hard would it be for supermarkets to send their waste cardboard to be recycled into their carrier bags?

 

Obviously I support the reusable-bag movement, but even the most popular and readily available ones in supermarkets are still made of some form of plastic - they will eventually end up in the Ocean too. Jute ones are okay, but they are small, expensive, and usually lined with plastic too. I have some lovely cotton and canvas ones - but again they are usually pretty small. I have boot-full of those Blue and Green ASDA bags because inevitably we never take enough bags in with us.

 

We have a rule in our household - however many bags LeHusband thinks we need, always add one.

 

Even so, Plastic Bags are the tip of the iceberg - I was looking around the supermarket the other day and the amount of stuff that actually requires plastic is astronomical - as a society we've moved away from the 'local shops and markets' model of buying food - we live busy lives so we don't have the time (or inclination) to go food shopping daily. My mother vividly remembers walking to the shops with my grandmother every other day or so and going to the butcher, the bakery, the greengrocer, the haberdashery, the hardware store, etc. She recounts tales of first learning about the Rabbit meat in her mother's Rabbit Pie by seeing rows of Rabbits hanging in the butcher's window.

 

When I was a child, my mum was a 'stay at home mum' - even then it was getting to the point of almost not being affordable - my father used to work two jobs - he'd come home from working on a construction site, have something to eat, then go out and work as a shop fitter until 1 or 2am, come home, get a couple of hours sleep, then be up at 5 for his 'day job'. In the end, it was killing him so Mum had to go back to work and started out working Night shifts (she was a Neonatal midwife). We used to buy bread from a local bakery that closed years ago, and there was a 'corner shop' that we went to all the time for fresh ham, cheese, and some greengrocery produce.

 

But now as a society we need our food to last longer - we need it to be packaged to last - if bread wasn't wrapped in plastic, it would go stale within a day. Milk deliveries became unreliable and prohibitively expensive. If you're out at work all day, the milk sits on the doorstep getting all warm and gross - assuming it doesn't get nicked. So we buy our milk at the supermarket in plastic bottles. It might be nice if you could buy it in glass bottles and return the bottles for a deposit refund, but can you imagine how much of a PITA that would be? Supermarkets wouldn't be able to handle it.

 

We buy other dairy produce in plastic too - Yoghurt, cream, cheese - years ago, Brian of 'Brian's Corner Shop' would wrap the chunk of cheese my Mum bought in wax paper. How would we store yoghurts if not in plastic? Glass? Again with the recycling. Cream is no longer something you pick up from a local shop in your own jug like my Nan used to. Or even siphon off the top of your milk delivery.

 

And what about meat? We don't buy our meat from a butcher any more - we need it wrapped properly to prevent contamination. It needs to be sealed because multiple people will pick up a package and handle it.

 

Anything that goes off or goes stale if exposed to air needs air-tight packaging - what can do that other than plastic, rubber/silicone and glass (which would still need a foil or plastic top seal). Anything 'fresh' needs to be protected from the bacteria-ridden paws of the unwashed masses (seriously, Hazmat ought to quarantine half the people that come into our local ASDA). Glass is costly and impractical.

 

All the while our society continues in this direction, we will not be able to rid ourselves of our reliance on plastic. It seems to me that we should focus less on trying to eradicate it, and more on making the recycling and collection of it more robust and resilient - how many loads of recycle bin collection have been dumped in landfill because local authorities don't have the infrastructure to deal with parts of it?

[6Foot2]

Link: Schools challenged to go single-use plastic free by 2022 [GOV.UK]

 

The Education Secretary has today (Thursday 27 December) urged all schools to eliminate their use of single use plastics by 2022.

 

Damian Hinds has called on senior leaders in schools to stop using items such as plastic bags, straws, bottles and food packaging in favour of sustainable alternatives, and invited them to start a conversation with pupils about the effects discarded plastics have on the environment and wildlife.

 

The UK is committed to being a global leader in tackling the issue of plastic pollution and Mr Hinds is urging schools across the country to follow the lead of Georgeham Primary School in Devon who are the first school in the UK to achieve single use plastic free status...

[Arthur]

Over one billion 'bags for life' sold undermine government efforts to reduce plastic waste

 

Efforts to cut down on disposable plastic bags by applying a 5p charge are being cancelled out by the sale of "bags for life", according to campaigners.

 

More than one billion of the more heavy-duty bags, which contain more plastic than their single-use equivalents, are being distributed every year in major UK supermarkets.

 

While they are meant to cut down on the overall quantity of plastic waste, customers treating these supposedly durable item as single use means their benefits are being undermined.

 

But while sales of 5p bags by the country’s biggest retailers dropped by around a fifth to 1.2 billion last year, 1.18 billion bags for life were sold over the same period.

 

The hardier bags cost between 5p and 10p, and tend to contain around twice as much plastic.

 

Data obtained by the Environmental Investigation Agency revealed the scale these bags are being sold in Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and other major supermarkets.

 

This prompted the charity to call for an increase in their cost to encourage customers to use the hardier bags multiple times.

 

^ Rather than increase the price of "bags for life" wouldn't it be better to get rid of them altogether?

[Andrew_C]

Over one billion 'bags for life' sold undermine government efforts to reduce plastic waste

 

 

 

^ Rather than increase the price of "bags for life" wouldn't it be better to get rid of them altogether?

Yes, but... You pop, unplanned, into the shop on the way home without your bags; what are you going to do? Juggle a bag of spuds, 3 lemons and a fruitcake all the way home?

[Arthur]

Yes, but... You pop, unplanned, into the shop on the way home without your bags; what are you going to do? Juggle a bag of spuds, 3 lemons and a fruitcake all the way home?

Buy one of the more expensive bags? The ones that cost £1-£5.

 

The supermarkets could also do what @AMLinington suggested and replace the bags with non-plastic alternatives and/or cardboard boxes.

 

If Primark can supply paper bags I don't see why the big supermarkets can't.

Edited December 28, 2018 by Arthur