Paper carrier bags are bad for the environment and why people don't give a fuck about it
I don't know if you saw recently, but Sir David Attenborough was at Glastonbury music festival to advocate recycling and how we all have to look out for the planet. I fully agree with him - we all do. But that is the problem, we all agree on the face of it but how many people are actually willing to act about it? The reason I ask is because he got one of the biggest cheers of the festival, but the place was still left like a shit hole at the end of it and was covered in rubbish and tents etc.
So I ask you this, either you "care" about the environment so your friends don't think you're a dick or you do care and just left the place like a dump anyway. Confusing huh?
Now I know that I sound like an arsehole and I am an arsehole don't get me wrong, but I work in the food packaging industry and know more than the average person about recycling and the direction that we are going in (UK primarily). I am aware too that I sound rather up myself with how I wrote that last sentence, and it's because of lack of education to the public regarding this subject.
There is a lot of work being done in this field every day, by thousands of people but the problem is that the UK doesn't know what direction it is going in regarding flexible packaging and the use of rigid plastics. There are multiple different types of plastic that can be recycled in rigid forms (PET, PE, PP etc) however there are issues regarding the sizes of the product and the colour of it. I would always advise to put rigid plastics into the recycling bin regardless of the colour because the recycling centres will handle them or dispose of correctly, always leave bottle caps on too if possible, removing the plastic sleeve if you could. The rigid side of this is relatively easy due to how recycling centres handle them, they use infra red lasers to determine what each product is, and they can't detect black which is what the problem is.
However when it comes to flexibles there are multiple issues, primarily being how will they identify them? There are hundreds of different combinations of plastic that can be laminated, all for specific reasons and uses to the food product, plus combine this with the thickness of each one and it is near enough impossible to identify. However! All PE structures (Carrier bags and bread bags are the most common) can be recycled in supermarkets through the carrier bag recycling stream. This is good - in fact it is great, but how many people are going to identify there rubbish and take it back to the store from where they bought it? I feel the same way about deposit return schemes (increase the cost of bottled drinks and then get a voucher back for returning the empty bottle), if people are used to putting there plastic bottles into a bin and it getting collected, why would they save them and then take them back?
It's just crazy, but it's the way that things are going and don't get me wrong we are moving in the right direction but it takes time. We are improving things and going down the compostable, recyclable and biodegradable route but there is a cost to this and people don't fully understand that. A lot of people are trying to keep costs down and are you really going to spend more for a product if the packaging is better for the environment? People I have asked certainly aren't but we will only find out one way.
Lastly I would like to point out that paper bags are not "good for the environment" they have upto 3x the carbon footprint of a plastic carrier bag. So I ask you this - what is sustainable to you? Are you after something that is recyclable but has a bigger carbon footprint or something that is recyclable and has a smaller carbon footprint? If supermarkets actually informed you of these things, people might think differently surely?
If you have any questions or want to know anything at all, just drop a comment and i will gladly answer anything you want to know on the subject.
So I ask you this, either you "care" about the environment so your friends don't think you're a dick or you do care and just left the place like a dump anyway. Confusing huh?
Now I know that I sound like an arsehole and I am an arsehole don't get me wrong, but I work in the food packaging industry and know more than the average person about recycling and the direction that we are going in (UK primarily). I am aware too that I sound rather up myself with how I wrote that last sentence, and it's because of lack of education to the public regarding this subject.
There is a lot of work being done in this field every day, by thousands of people but the problem is that the UK doesn't know what direction it is going in regarding flexible packaging and the use of rigid plastics. There are multiple different types of plastic that can be recycled in rigid forms (PET, PE, PP etc) however there are issues regarding the sizes of the product and the colour of it. I would always advise to put rigid plastics into the recycling bin regardless of the colour because the recycling centres will handle them or dispose of correctly, always leave bottle caps on too if possible, removing the plastic sleeve if you could. The rigid side of this is relatively easy due to how recycling centres handle them, they use infra red lasers to determine what each product is, and they can't detect black which is what the problem is.
However when it comes to flexibles there are multiple issues, primarily being how will they identify them? There are hundreds of different combinations of plastic that can be laminated, all for specific reasons and uses to the food product, plus combine this with the thickness of each one and it is near enough impossible to identify. However! All PE structures (Carrier bags and bread bags are the most common) can be recycled in supermarkets through the carrier bag recycling stream. This is good - in fact it is great, but how many people are going to identify there rubbish and take it back to the store from where they bought it? I feel the same way about deposit return schemes (increase the cost of bottled drinks and then get a voucher back for returning the empty bottle), if people are used to putting there plastic bottles into a bin and it getting collected, why would they save them and then take them back?
It's just crazy, but it's the way that things are going and don't get me wrong we are moving in the right direction but it takes time. We are improving things and going down the compostable, recyclable and biodegradable route but there is a cost to this and people don't fully understand that. A lot of people are trying to keep costs down and are you really going to spend more for a product if the packaging is better for the environment? People I have asked certainly aren't but we will only find out one way.
Lastly I would like to point out that paper bags are not "good for the environment" they have upto 3x the carbon footprint of a plastic carrier bag. So I ask you this - what is sustainable to you? Are you after something that is recyclable but has a bigger carbon footprint or something that is recyclable and has a smaller carbon footprint? If supermarkets actually informed you of these things, people might think differently surely?
If you have any questions or want to know anything at all, just drop a comment and i will gladly answer anything you want to know on the subject.
Comments
Post a Comment