Plastic reduction

[mavhc]

Landfill isn't that much of a problem really. Half the plastic you put in recycling probably ends up there anyway.

 

Also need to lobby for laws that cause every manufacturer and person to pay for the pollution they cause, no more free rides = people straight away finding better and cheaper solutions.

 

Make everyone pay 110% of the cost of cleaning up the pollution they cause as a tax

 

"we can't recycle crisp packets" "are you sure?" "oh wait, yes we can"

 

And suddenly someone finds compostable wrappers for magazines and food, it's as if they weren't really looking.

[elsiegee40]

Landfill isn't that much of a problem really. Half the plastic you put in recycling probably ends up there anyway.

 

Of course landfill is a problem. You are talking through your backside.

 

If your plastic goes to landfill, it gets broken, some of it doesn’t get buried and blows away ... either way it releases plastics into the environment.

 

Other stuff, eg batteries, going to landfill release poisons.

 

As landfill sites are filled, new ones are needed to take over.

 

The land used for landfill should be sustaining nature rather than being buried under rubbish.

 

Also need to lobby for laws that cause every manufacturer and person to pay for the pollution they cause, no more free rides = people straight away finding better and cheaper solutions.

 

Make everyone pay 110% of the cost of cleaning up the pollution they cause as a tax

 

"we can't recycle crisp packets" "are you sure?" "oh wait, yes we can"

 

And suddenly someone finds compostable wrappers for magazines and food, it's as if they weren't really looking.

 

Won’t disagree with this

Edited September 1, 2019 by elsiegee40

[hardtailstar]

Well I did my first weekly lunch food shop in Tesco Express today trying to buy less plastic.

 

I had to completely change my normal shop. Everything id normally buy was covered in non recyclable items.

 

I think I ended up with two items that can't be recycled but these are the wrapping around bread (no single lose rolls available) and cheese.

 

Next week I'll go to the normal sized Tesco and see what I can do there.

 

Things I noticed:

- less packaging seemed to be more expensive. Based on multibags of crisps being cheaper to single large bags or tubes.

 

- lots of items say to check local recycling so knowledge of what my council recycles is needed before my next shop.

 

- my local small tescos doesn't seem to have many items free from packaging.

 

Off to do more research....

[elsiegee40]

I think the supermarket convenience stores are among the worst for packaging. They sell very little fresh stuff loose.

[mavhc]

That's the problem, packaging is too cheap because the externalities aren't paid.

 

Which also means recycling isn't profitable, even if you ship it half way around the world to somewhere that has cheap labour and terrible facilities for burying what can't be recycled.

[FN-GM]

The Carlsberg packs look interesting:

 

[ATTACH]54831[/ATTACH]

 

 

 

https://www.carlsberg.com/en-gb/betterment-hero-stories/snappack

 

The important question is whether it's drinkable....

 

6 packs in Australia are held together with cardboard. When I come to think about it I cant think of any beer in the shop packaged in plastic.

[IrritableTech]

The Carlsberg packs look interesting:

[ATTACH]54831[/ATTACH]

https://www.carlsberg.com/en-gb/betterment-hero-stories/snappack

The important question is whether it's drinkable....

 

This is what we were supplied with at the festival I was working this year. They look nice but fall apart as soon as you touch them. As for the taste - well that is for individuals to decide.

[IrritableTech]

I think the supermarket convenience stores are among the worst for packaging. They sell very little fresh stuff loose.

 

Then leave your unwanted packaging at the till. The supermarkets are responsible for it. If we all did it, how quickly would packaging change?

[maark]

Try and home cook as much as possible e.g. biscuits, onion bhajias etc. They taste better.

Tins of cat food, cardboard boxes of washing powder. Some are difficult e.g. margarine (change to butter?), milk.

I look for alternative wherever possible not always easy but everything helps and nudges manufacturers in the right direction.

[mavhc]

Cooking at home probably produces more pollution per biscuit than mass production, that's the whole point of mass production.

[elsiegee40]

Cooking at home probably produces more pollution per biscuit than mass production, that's the whole point of mass production.

 

Home cooking involves considerably less packaging which uses energy to produce and goes to landfill or requires energy for disposal. It also doesn’t require transport to a point of sale and doesn’t contain those additives like preservatives to make it lengthen its shelf life.

 

Home cooking, especially when using local produce, is far for more environment friendly. Call it open source food perhaps.. cheaper and anyone can do it.

Edited September 3, 2019 by elsiegee40

[jmak]

Better not to have the waste in the first place.

If there is waste then recycle it.

Landfill is the last thing you want to create

 

 

 

Off topic. Start a new thread

 

It was reading articles like this that made me question it:

 

'Plastic recycling is a myth': what really happens to your rubbish?

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/17/plastic-recycling-myth-what-really-happens-your-rubbish?

 

And the film "Plastic China"

 

Of course Bob the builder was right: reduce, reuse, recycle and I've religiously washed out all of the plastics and sorted them as requested by our local authority for years; just genuinely wonder whether it's actually making the problem worse (burning fossil fuels to ship it round the world so that someone else can either bury or burn most of it feels worse).

 

 

The article suggests that progress is being made and Loop ( https://www.cbsnews.com/news/terracycle-loop-zero-waste-products-procter-gamble-nestle-household-brands-expanding/# ) sounds encouraging.

[elsiegee40]

It was reading articles like this that made me question it:

 

'Plastic recycling is a myth': what really happens to your rubbish?

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/17/plastic-recycling-myth-what-really-happens-your-rubbish?

 

And the film "Plastic China"

 

Of course Bob the builder was right: reduce, reuse, recycle and I've religiously washed out all of the plastics and sorted them as requested by our local authority for years; just genuinely wonder whether it's actually making the problem worse (burning fossil fuels to ship it round the world so that someone else can either bury or burn most of it feels worse).

 

 

The article suggests that progress is being made and Loop ( https://www.cbsnews.com/news/terracycle-loop-zero-waste-products-procter-gamble-nestle-household-brands-expanding/# ) sounds encouraging.

 

Which is why I put them in the order I did. I still think recycling is better than landfill.

[mavhc]

Of course that hot water you used to wash them had to be collected, cleaned, and heated.

 

How much plastic is around a packet of biscuits? 1g?

 

Now what about the packaging for the home cooked biscuit ingredients?

 

Hopefully 100% of the ingredients bought are used, and none go off.

 

Next you have your oven on for, what, 30 mins to cook them? 3kW oven, let's say it's on for 50% of that time, that's 0.75 kWh for 1 packet of home made biscuits, vs a massive oven that cooks 1000s at once.

 

One thing to do is only by transparent plastic containers, coloured ones are much less valuable to recycle.

[elsiegee40]

Of course that hot water you used to wash them had to be collected, cleaned, and heated.

 

How much plastic is around a packet of biscuits? 1g?

 

Now what about the packaging for the home cooked biscuit ingredients?

 

Hopefully 100% of the ingredients bought are used, and none go off.

 

Next you have your oven on for, what, 30 mins to cook them? 3kW oven, let's say it's on for 50% of that time, that's 0.75 kWh for 1 packet of home made biscuits, vs a massive oven that cooks 1000s at once.

 

One thing to do is only by transparent plastic containers, coloured ones are much less valuable to recycle.

 

So you would rather we smother more and more land with waste that will not break down in a hurry. And that which does start to break up gets blown away, ends up in our waterways and enters the food chain?

[mavhc]

Doesn't blow away though, it's buried, in this country anyway. The use and disposal of plastic in the UK is a minor issue, better to spend resources fixing issues that have a bigger impact. It's a question of scale.

 

Once we've fixed burning oil and gas and coal, and fishing, and waste disposal in countries without organised systems, then get onto the long tail.

 

Plus people think they've done their bit, when really they've not fixed anything.

[elsiegee40]

Doesn't blow away though, it's buried, in this country anyway. The use and disposal of plastic in the UK is a minor issue, better to spend resources fixing issues that have a bigger impact. It's a question of scale.

 

Once we've fixed burning oil and gas and coal, and fishing, and waste disposal in countries without organised systems, then get onto the long tail.

 

Plus people think they've done their bit, when really they've not fixed anything.

 

Household waste is taken to a waste transfer station by the council dustcarts. There the cart is emptied into a pile in a bay. Loose bags and things blow away. The pile gets bigger snd then it is taken to its final destination in bigger lorries. Here it is dumped, but not instantly covered so more plastic escapes.

 

Our waste transfer station, also the main recycling point, on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells is, sadly, surrounded by bags and waste that have blown from it and the dustcarts.

 

And all that waste is covering land that could be a home for nature, but won’t be be for many years.

 

Your logic is unique and can only be explained as trolling and I cannot see any point in continuing to engage with you.

 

Continue to talk nonsense if you must, but don’t expect a response

[mavhc]

https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Calendar_2011_03_AMERICANA/Science-2015-Jambeck-768-71__2_.pdf

 

2% of plastic in the sea comes from EU and USA combined, 82% from asia/pacific rim., 16% from the rest of the world

[elsiegee40]

Burger King ditches free toys and will 'melt' old ones

Burger King will no longer give away plastic toys with children's meals, amid pressure to reduce plastic waste.

 

The fast food restaurant chain is also encouraging customers to bring in old promotional plastic toys, which it says it plans to melt to make other items.

 

The move comes after two Hampshire children petitioned the fast food giant and its rival McDonald's to stop giving away free plastic toys.

McDonald's said its customers would be able to choose between a toy and fruit.

 

The petition, organised by Ella, aged nine, and Caitlin McEwan, aged seven, calling for companies to "think of the environment and stop giving plastic toys with their kids meals" has received more than half a million signatories.

 

The girls wrote: "Children only play with the plastic toys they give us for a few minutes before they get thrown away and harm animals and pollute the sea."

 

Instead, they suggested any giveaways could be made from sustainable materials.

 

Just hours before Burger King announced its change of policy, rival chain McDonald's said it had no plans to scrap its toy giveaways.

Instead, customers will be given the option of swapping the toy for a sachet of fruit if they wish.

 

McDonald's also plans a trial from early next year enabling parents to choose between a book or a toy.

 

"The gifts provide fun for many families and children. That's why we'll be running these trials, in order to give our customers a choice. They also can choose not to have a toy or gift at all," said Paul Pomroy, chief executive of McDonald's UK and Ireland.

 

But Burger King said it wanted to undertake "significant action" to address the issue of plastic waste.

 

The fast-food restaurant chain will provide bins in its restaurants to collect old toys. It said the move would save 320 tonnes of plastic a year.

 

Helen Bird, from sustainability campaign group Wrap, described Burger King's response as a "bold move", welcoming the in-store collections since plastic toys cannot be recycled with plastic packaging at home.

Pentatonic, which makes consumer goods from recycled materials, is working with Burger King to recycle collected plastic toys into restaurant items such as trays and play areas.

 

Most toys today are made from three polymers - polypropylene, ABS and PET.

 

Pentatonic said no harmful gases would be released into the environment when these plastics were melted.

 

The melted plastic forms a continuous strip and can then be cut into beads or pellets which are used to manufacture new plastic products, the firm said.

 

"If we were to use recycled polypropylene to make a tray, instead of new plastic, total energy consumption would be reduced by approximately 88% and carbon emissions would be cut by approximately 70%," Pentatonic's chief executive Johann Boedecker told the BBC.

[Arthur]

Some tea bags may shed billions of microplastics per cup

 

You may be swallowing billions of tiny plastic particles while sipping a cup of freshly brewed gourmet tea, a new study from McGill University in Montreal suggests.

 

Many fancier teas now come in "silken" bags instead of paper. Some of them are pyramid-shaped, which is billed as a way to make room for the large leaves in premium teas to expand.

 

Nathalie Tufenkji, a professor of chemical engineering at the Montreal university, was surprised to find one such bag in the tea she ordered from a coffee shop one morning.

 

It looked like plastic, she recalled. "I said, 'Oh God, I'm sure if it's plastic it's, like, breaking down into the tea.'"

 

So when she got into the lab, she asked her graduate student, Laura Hernandez, to go out and buy a bunch from different brands.

 

Sure enough, Hernandez's lab tests showed that when steeped in hot water, the tea bags released microplastic and even smaller nanoplastic particles — and not just the hundreds or thousands Tufenkji had been expecting.

 

"We were shocked when we saw billions of particles in a single cup of tea," she said.

 

One cup from a single tea bag could contain 11.6 billion microplastic and 3.1 billion nanoplastic particles, the researchers estimated from their results, published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

 

The bits are so tiny — on average, the size of grains of dust or pollen — that the amount in one cup is about 16 micrograms or one-sixtieth of a milligram of plastic.

 

But that's still much more than has been found in other foods and beverages, including tap and bottled water, beer, honey, fish and shellfish, chicken and salt. Tufekji said that's partly because her study included and counted smaller particles than most other studies. But it's also because, for most foods and beverages, the plastic is an accidental contaminant. With tea "you're literally adding plastic into the beverage."

 

That may sound unappetizing, but is it a health risk? After all, the plastics are made of PET (polyethylene terephthalate, found in plastic drink bottles) and nylon (used in many food bags and pouches) that are approved as food packaging. And the World Health Organization has said the risk from microplastics in drinking water is low, especially if the particles are relatively large.

 

So far, scientists don't know what, if any, risks there might be.

 

"There's really no research. But this really points to the need to do those studies," Tufenkji said. "Think of people who drink one or two or three cups of tea a day, every day."

[elsiegee40]

Some tea bags may shed billions of microplastics per cup

 

I have been avoiding putting tea bags in the compostable bin for that very reason, despite the council saying that’s where they should go.

 

I wish I could easily identify tea bags that were made without plastic fibres. I know they’re difficult to make. Perhaps loose tea is the only option

[FishCustard]

Loose tea and a metal strainer/"reusable teabag" thingy!

[elsiegee40]

I have been avoiding putting tea bags in the compostable bin for that very reason, despite the council saying that’s where they should go.

 

I wish I could easily identify tea bags that were made without plastic fibres. I know they’re difficult to make. Perhaps loose tea is the only option

 

Actually it seems it is possible. Last I looked was at the start of the summer and this article is dated 30 July

 

13 best plastic free tea bags to make your brew better for the planet - Independent

[mavhc]

Plus the 23 Wh to boil the water per cup, assuming you only boil 1 cup of water each time, and the 36 Wh to grow enough tea for 1 tea bag.

 

Diesel is 48MJ/kg, so 13.3 kWh/kg, or for 221 times more than the 60Wh, so 4.5 grams of oil to make a cup of tea.

[localzuk]

Generators aren't 100% efficient, so that wouldn't be right.