Recycling is trending. Green-washing policies, carbon net zero, sustainability, repurposing, pre-loved… never before have we been so environment conscious, following a narrative that is driven by the impact of government policies and punitive taxes.
The reality is that we only need to look back fifty years to understand how recycling used to be done. The post war decade of the fifties and sixties was an era in which plastics were still in their infancy. Nothing went to waste. Glass bottles were washed out and returned to milk and brewery depots to be refilled. Rag ‘n’ bone carts would do regular weekly trips calling for ‘any old iron’. If you had an old steel box section lying around your front yard, this would be picked up and repurposed. Shopping was delivered by boys on bicycles, packed into paper bags or wooden crates that were stored and used again and again.
The creation of a plastic mountain on land and in sea
In those days this was part of the everyday landscape that made up life. The proliferation of plastic put paid to that. The increase in the use of plastic created a throwaway consumer -led society that thinks a single apple wrapped in a piece of plastic is a convenient way of selling fruit. Household electrical appliances were manufactured with obsolescence in mind, and the latest must have gadgets saw perfectly functional products adding to the mountain of discarded goods.
Studies show that between 1950 and 2017, 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic has been manufactured. The packaging industry accounts for 47 per cent of this. Currently, up to 11 million tonnes of plastic waste escape into the ocean.
As a material, it simply does not go away. While metals can be reworked and restructured, plastic waste simply exists. Experts agree that the only way to escape from this spiraling plastic pollution is to create a responsible circular economy that addresses the continuing production of fresh virgin plastic.
In the meantime, while governments are procrastinating about ways in which we can better look after our environment, most of us realize that excessive plastic is not a good thing, and have long been implementing strategies to reduce our reliance on this material.
The importance of compounding individual actions
One of the biggest moves to reduce plastic in every day use, and one which has had a significant impact, is when UK supermarkets started charging for plastic bags. When this measure was introduced in 2016, supermarkets were supplying 1.33 billion single use plastic bags every years. In the financial year 2022-23, that number dropped by a massive 99 per cent, to 133 million.
This was a measure that enabled an overnight shift in behavior from millions of shoppers across the country. Shoppers have been increasingly nudged over the years by increasing bag prices. While initially a plastic bag was charged at 5p, these days supermarkets can charge anything from 50p to £1 for a ‘bog for life’, capitalizing on those slightly more forgetful or disorganized shoppers who forget to put their empty bags in the car before heading out to the shops!
This move was a prime example of how legislation needs to work hand in hand with communities to help facilitate a move towards a change in behavior which will ultimately lead to a reduction in the use of plastics. Most households know that reducing plastic consumption is crucial to the future wellbeing of our plant, and will happily work proactively to ensure that this happens. However, if top line policies are not reflecting a communal approach, and all initiatives are causing more punitive pain than collaborative pleasure, then progress will be slow.
