Plastic fantastic?

Eco-design expert and Dumped guru, Rob Holdway, gives you the lowdown on our volunteers, rubbish and waste and Dumped.

This show highlights the problem of plastic recycling. How much of the plastic we use actually gets recycled?

Plastic fantastic? Well not really. 17.5 billion. That’s the number of plastic bags given away by supermarkets every year in the UK alone. That’s the equivalent of 290 bags per person. Each year, food wrappings are estimated to add £470 to our shopping budget. Yet we only recycle a pathetic 7% of our plastic waste in the UK. Plastic packaging is Selena’s personal bugbear (‘Don’t you get me started on plastic packaging’).

Plastic is made from an oil derivative. It's a non-renewable resource so we should do everything possible to limits its use. The bizarre thing is that it’s easy to recycle plastic if you can get the quantity and purity of material back from the consumer. But water bottles (made from polyethelene terephthalate) and milk bottles (made from high density polyethelene) are usually the only types that get recycled. They are worth some cash to the recycler.

The real problem with plastic packaging is the lack of an effective subsidised collection system in the UK to make it worth the effort. In Switzerland, plastic bottles for water and soft drinks have a deposit on them and can be returned for re-use, as can beer bottles and some wine bottles. The unfortunate fact is that without either the manufacturer, retailer or consumer (through taxes) subsidising collection, it is unlikely that plastics other than plastic milk or water bottles will be collected by councils.

And that is the real issue. Unless the economics for recovery stack up then no-one will invest in it.

It’s about time we reduced the amount we use and recycled more. There are clear environmental benefits. Carrier bags made from recycled rather than virgin polythene have a number of environmental benefits:

• reduction of energy consumption by 66%
• production of only 33% of the sulphur dioxide and 50% of the nitrous oxide
• reduction of water usage by nearly 90%
• reduction of carbon dioxide generation by two-and-a-half times

One study concluded that 1.8 tonnes of oil are saved for every tonne of recycled polythene produced. So, the science is clear.

Also, has anyone stopped to ask why on earth we spend so much money on bottled water when we have perfectly good tap water? The Americans spend more on bottled water than Ipods or going to the movies!

If you have purchased a product which you believe has too much packaging, what can you do?

You can contact your local Trading Standards Office. They will need the product details and the date and place of purchase. Try and send the original packaging. An initial assessment will be made by specialist officers before a decision on the most appropriate course of action is taken. The legislation (so-called essential requirements) governing excess packaging is open to interpretation. Formal enforcement action (being costly fines) is only one of the options available to them.

You can also contact pressure groups such as the National Federation of Women's Institutes. The NFWI is the largest women's organisation in the UK, with more than 211,000 members in 6800 WIs. Don’t think of them as making jam and scones, they’ve moved on. The WI campaigns on issues that matter to women and their communities, from children's diets and human trafficking to healthy eating and the environment.

On 20 June 2006, the NFWI launched its Packaging Day of Action, when more than 100 events were held at supermarkets to call on the public to return excess packaging and to ask supermarkets to reduce waste. The aims of this packaging campaign are to get rid of unnecessary and excessive packaging on food products; to use only compostable and recyclable materials where packaging is required; to reduce the number of carrier bags given; to donate food waste to charities where possible, ensuring that the remainder is composted; to purchase more local foods (within a 30 mile radius of the store) in order to cut down on food miles and reduce the need for packaging.

One year on and the WI is launching a survey to assess how effective their campaign has been by determining how much excess packaging supermarkets still use and which supermarkets are the worst offenders. The survey will assess supermarkets across the country and identify whether policies instigated by head offices are being reflected in stores.

The survey is supported by The Independent and can be completed online at www.theWI.org.uk/packaging

The Observer article One family, one month, 50kg of packaging. Why? shows just how much packaging there is in use.