the slogan “reduce, reuse, recycle” has been around for
at least 20 years now, but these days its seems that, at least in
terms of government or civic policies, the only thing people are
interested in is “recycle”. if we all put a bit more effort
into “reduce”, we’d have a hell of a lot less to recycle –
but the manufacturers of the world are doing everything they can to
prevent that from happening; obviously there’s profit in plastic.
andy & i are pretty aware shoppers and wherever possible avoid
packaging, but even so our plastic recycling bag fills up nearly
every week. this plastic – which includes packaging from things like
cheese, tofu, miso, and other things that seem to be impossible to
buy without buying plastic – apparently gets recycled into things
like fabric for clothes produced in china. but what kind of a
solution is that? what happens when the clothes are worn out? are
they recycled again? what’s the environmental cost of the plastic
fabric processing? & is it really a good thing for us to be
wearing plastic clothes?
we don’t want excess packaging –
but it’s forced onto us by manufacturers. something like 95% of all
plastic is thrown out within six months of being purchased, & the
percentage that gets thrown out as soon as an item is taken home must
also be very high. campaigns where people remove and leave excess
packaging at the check-out counter have been happening for years but
seem to have made little difference. these days there are facebook
groups with people fed up with packaging – it is absolutely not what
consumers want. & yet the manufacturers keep doing it, more &
more & more. it’s difficult to buy things like pens, or reels of
cotton thread, or nails, without buying plastic packaging as well.
how can we make them stop encasing everything in plastic????
arguments about convenience can no longer carry any weight against
the massive environmental damage caused by plastic.
things
that it seems impossible to buy without buying plastic packaging:
- potato crisps (unless you live somewhere like spain or czech republic where you can buy them loose from street stalls …)
- shampoo (in wellington i could at least refill shampoo & other bottles at commonsense organics, but so far in munich i haven’t found anywhere that does refills)
- miso
- tofu
- cheese (at the cheese counter in al natura, they cut the slice of cheese you want, wrap it in plastic, & hand you a piece of paper to wrap the cheese in when you get home; we asked them to wrap the cheese in the paper instead of the plastic, & were told that they were “not allowed” to do that – i’m going to write them a letter!)
food packaging is the biggest single market for plastics, and it does not use any recycled plastics because of hygiene concerns. despite lots of promotion about recycling, still most food packaging, drink bottles, etc ends up in landfills. there is lots of information online about plastics recycling, but the real issue to work on is REDUCTION.