Wrapping perishable vegetables in a material that can last five hundred years in the ground just doesn’t make any sense. We need to target packaging, rethink our buying habits and create more demand for positive change.
David de Rothschild, environmental campaigner and explorer
Almost all the plastic ever manufactured is still in the environment, and scientists estimate that at least a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die every year as a direct result of plastic pollution. Aside from an astonishing 46,000 pieces of visible marine debris in every square mile of ocean, plastic that has degraded into microscopic particles secretes toxic chemicals into the marine environment and into the food chain, turning mussels and lugworms into sterile hermaphrodites.
Manufacturers are beginning to replace plastic packaging with biodegradable corn-starch and cellulose alternatives, but we can all lessen the impact by reassessing how we use, dispose of and reuse plastics.
All types of plastic can be recycled six times and can then be burned to use the embedded energy one final time – although incineration throws up its own environmental problems. Recycling the plastic we have already created keeps it out of landfill and the wider environment.
Sainsbury’s may have urged customers to “take an old bag shopping”, and most of the leading supermarkets are cutting down on single-use plastic bags, but all kinds of manufacturers and retailers still fall short when it comes to packaging.
Message in a bottle
European white stork at a landfill site, Spain © John Cancalosi/Still Pictures
Dead American Coot, California © John Cancalosi/Peter Arnold Inc
Pelican, India © Gidwani Mohan/UNEP
Green sea turtle, the Comoros © Pierre Huguet/Biosphoto
