advertisement


Johnson: Recycling is "red herring"

paulfromcamden

paulfromcamden

Baffled
Johnson named and shamed Coca-Cola as being one of 12 corporations “producing the overwhelming bulk of the world’s plastics”. He said the production of the material for single-use items was a “massive problem”... “Recycling isn’t the answer, I’ve got to be honest with you,” the prime minister said. “You’re not going to like this: it doesn’t begin to address the problem. You can only recycle plastic a couple of times, really. What you’ve got to do is stop the production of plastic. Stop the first use of plastic. The recycling thing is a red herring … We’ve all got to cut down on our use of plastic.”

Tanya Steele, the chief executive of WWF UK, who was fielding questions with Johnson at the event, appeared to take a different view from him. “We have to reduce, we have to reuse – I do think we need to do a little bit of recycling, PM, and have some system to do so,” she said. Johnson interjected to say: “It doesn’t work. I don’t want to be doctrinaire about this, but if people think we can just recycle our way out of the problem, we’ll be making a huge mistake.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ays-chances-of-cop26-success-are-touch-and-go

To be honest I don't entirely disagree with him - the volume of plastic produced is a disaster. Though I hope people don't see this as meaning they should give up on recycling.
 
paulfromcamden said:
You can buy wine in 1.5l glass bottles and larger. Though it obviously costs more and there's an environmental impact to transporting fizzy pop in heavier containers.
Click to expand...
Also to making heavy containers. I used to work in dairy in the last days of glass. In terms of purchase price once trippage goes below 8 the single use pack is cheaper. There will be similar calculations for whole life environment al costs. Similarly paper a not the panacea it's made out to be. Water usage in paper manufacturing is astronomical. A paper bag has a bigger footprint than a plastic one. Things are never as simple as you might like.
 
stevec67 said:
Also to making heavy containers. I used to work in dairy in the last days of glass. In terms of purchase price once trippage goes below 8 the single use pack is cheaper. There will be similar calculations for whole life environment al costs. Similarly paper a not the panacea it's made out to be. Water usage in paper manufacturing is astronomical. A paper bag has a bigger footprint than a plastic one. Things are never as simple as you might like.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. See also tote bags (though I'm pretty sure I've got the required 200 uses or whatever out of mine now!). And how you weight different criteria of 'badness' will affect how you view different options. You're right - it's not always black and white.

On the other hand single use plastic is unquestionably a disaster and plastic production is growing year on year not reducing. We can't carry on as we are.

The frustrating thing is that it feels like the government is doing it's usual blame it on business schtick.
 
Plastic bottles should be banned entirely IMO. Glass is the perfect material for the job, hygienic, reusable, recyclable. The whole trajectory has been crazy, first to those dreadful human-proof tetrapac things that are impossible to open without getting milk on the ceiling, to plastic bottles which are horrible and environmentally disastrous. There was just nothing wrong with glass. Coke in particular was just ‘right’ in a glass bottle, it is an entirely different and unquestionably worse drink in either a can or plastic bottle. Not that I’m ever allowed to drink it being a diabetic.
 
paulfromcamden said:
Absolutely. See also tote bags (though I'm pretty sure I've got the required 200 uses or whatever out of mine now!). And how you weight different criteria of 'badness' will affect how you view different options. You're right - it's not always black and white.

On the other hand single use plastic is unquestionably a disaster and plastic production is growing year on year not reducing. We can't carry on as we are.

The frustrating thing is that it feels like the government is doing it's usual blame it on business schtick.
Click to expand...
I think the canvas tote is about 100 trips to match a plastic bag. That's not including laundry costs. You're not putting food in a bag that's done 100 trips without a wash, I hope.
 
Tony L said:
There was just nothing wrong with glass.
Click to expand...

PET is a fraction of the cost, and lower weight hence lower transport costs. Recycled PET, according to the doco, is twice the price of new PET .....though I guess that is not at current energy and oil prices....
 
I don't think Bojo has suddenly become an environmentalist ,sounds more like a smart ass answer to pass the buck and do nothing on recycling.
 
Good Evening All,

On a not unrelated front I looked to replace the bottled Stella I enjoy with a tin can version thinking I would be doing my bit. You can't get Stella in 284ml tinnies only larger ones.

I'm not sure of the overall environmental impact of glass over aluminium but one would consume less energy whilst being transported.

Regards

Richard
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top