Monday 19 February 2018

No More Plastic Carrier Bags!

Collection point for plastic carrier bags, when they can't be used any more.

Hello again. It's great to see not only people from the UK, US and Canada are reading this blog, but also people from France, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates and Brazil. It would be lovely if you could leave a comment telling me a bit about yourself and what you find interesting or helpful.

This week I shall be thinking about plastic waste and possible solutions.

You may have watched the final episode of Blue Planet II and been among the many people who were shocked to see albatross parents unwittingly feeding their chicks plastic and mother dolphins potentially exposing their new-born calves to pollutants through their contaminated milk. You may only have heard about it, but since that episode was shown everyone seems to be talking about the huge problem that plastics are causing in our oceans and elsewhere.

In many ways plastic is a marvellous material with so many uses. It's strong, waterproof, harder to break than glass and can be flexible. Unlike metal containers it can go in the microwave. As a rule it's cheaper and more environmentally friendly to produce than paper and metal products.

Plastic is causing problems because it lasts for a very long time.

Another part of the problem is that so much plastic is now being produced for containers and wrappers that will only be used once and which some people simply throw away.

In some parts of the world there are no waste collection services or recycling systems. Some places are too remote to be reached by such services if they did exist in their country.

The volume of plastic produced is making it hard to cope with. China doesn't want any more of our waste plastic, so we must find ways to cut back on the amount we use. According to reports there's already a backlog of plastic waste building up at UK recycling plants and the same will be happening in the US and many other countries.

To stop this becoming a continuing crisis we must do everything we can to avoid single use plastic where at all possible. Avoiding waste of any kind is usually a good idea.

Before watching Blue Planet II you may have heard of dead turtles, whales and sea birds found with their stomachs full of plastic bags, which it's thought they mistook for jelly fish.  Some of this is happening in British waters because of plastic bags from British beaches. The problem is a worldwide problem but it's one we can do something about.

Step One is to reuse any plastic bags we already have until they are no good.

Step Two is to recycle all our old, normal plastic carrier bags. Most supermarkets have a collection point for carrier bags. Branches of Sainsbury's and Waitrose near me do.

Bags that can be recycled in this way might have this logo on them



Step Three, when we've used up our stash of plastic carrier bags is to consider how many reusable bags we might need and what is best for our purpose.  I'll look at that next time.


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