Supermarkets
are being pushed to go ‘single use plastic free’ But what does this actually
mean? What exactly is single use plastic? Is it plastic bags that cannot be
recycled, or is it all plastic that is used once and then possibly recycled if
people can be bothered to put it in the recycling bin?
Assuming
the first option, taking a virtual walk around my usual supermarket the
following items are in pre-priced/barcoded plastic:
Bags of
vegetables including, carrots, parsnips, cauliflower, courgettes, onions,
potatoes, lettuce, radish plus precut salad and vegetables.
Bags of
fruit including, apples of various varieties, pears, various, bananas (even
though they come in their own packaging!)
I won’t
mention all the fruits, meat, fish and cooked meats that come in recyclable
punnets, trays and dishes with plastic tops or sleeves that are not recyclable.
Then we
have plastic bags of cleaning products, with either liquid-tabs or solid
tablets. I've never given a thought as to what happens to the liquid-tabs when
the disappear. Do they disappear completely or are they turned into invisible
micro plastic? Think I’ll go back to powder just in case.
On to
biscuits and sweets. All those packs of Minstrels, Maltesers, M&Ms etc, all
in plastic packs. Don’t know if they can be recycled but bet they usually end
up in the bin.
Biscuits
have always been wrapped in plastic of some sort. But PPPick up a Penguin, or
any of the other options and you have double wrapping, the outer wrapping for
the whole pack, then each individual biscuit wrapped in plastic.
Move on
to Breakfast. Breakfast biscuits are great, they come in a cardboard box but
each individual serving is wrapped in plastic of the non-recyclable type.
Individual sachets of porridge, apart from being ridiculously expensive
compared to actually buying a packet of porridge oats, more packaging is
involved.
Then we
come to drinks. Squash comes in plastic, water comes in plastic; although I
fail to understand why we need bottled water in every shop in a country where
tap water is perfectly drinkable. I know some areas might have problems, but
everywhere? You can always filter your water if you wish, but the rows and rows
of water in plastic bottles is surely unnecessary in most parts of the UK.
All this
is without mentioning butter tubs, yoghurt pots, cheese wrappers, pizzas, table
sauces that used to come in glass bottles, and all the things I have forgotten.
So how do
we cut out single use plastics and what exactly are the supermarkets planning
to do? Iceland said they would cut out single use plastics but all their frozen
vegetables, fish, and some meats come in plastic bags. It sounds like a good
idea but we have become so dependent on using plastic bags what is the
alternative?
It’s not
only drinking straws and coffee cups, I spotted a journalist at a press
conference asking questions about plastic waste holding a plastic pen! We don’t
even register what we are using half the time.
I totally
agree that too much plastic waste is getting into the environment posing a
threat to wildlife, but how can we stop it? We even put our rubbish in plastic
bin liners!
Right, time to go shopping now!
