The Solution
to our
plastic problem
It’s all down to us, is it?
esults from a survey have found that millennials are the least likely age group to recycle . But, surely, this is inaccurate? This crushes the view that young people are more environmentally conscious than older generations. But after seeing young people advocate during climate change rallies and social media flooded in posts about plastic pollution. It is hard to comprehend that we are the ones who need to pick this mess up. Perhaps we have the right intentions, but in practice we don’t recycle enough.
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Is it an attitude problem?
The attitudes we have about the environment have a powerful influence over our behaviours. Careless attitudes often allude careless actions. For example: contamination of recyclable material due to non-recyclables being placed in the recycling bin. Millennials have been printed with this stereotypical mindset.
“There are people who are not motivated to recycle and won’t give it attention,” says an officer from Leeds City Council.
Perhaps it is matter of priorities, rather than attitudes. Sharon Ross from WRWA, says:
“I think people are busy: they have work, children. There are so many different pressures in life, but people just forget. Some people do it perfectly, I think there is a very small percentage of people who don’t care and maybe they do have other priorities. But they really don’t care about the consequences of what they’re doing.”
How could we change these attitudes and behaviours?
Education and communication are ways local authorities and recycling facilities are trying to change behaviours of recycling. WRWA try to educate their London boroughs through communication, Sharon Ross says: “There are array of messages you can send out. We try and do it simply with pictures as opposed to lots of text… just getting people interested enough to look at it – trying to attract attention.”
“If you tell someone you have to recycle. Human nature would be to kick against that and just stick everything into a normal bin,” comments Steve Blackburn, Wood PLC, waste management.
Personal attitudes are hard to change; even when someone acknowledges that recycling is ‘good’, giving them information about the benefits is generally not a strongest device for behaviour change.
But eyes open when there’s money or a reward involved. Deposit reward schemes are common around Europe, so if you recycle you will receive a reward whether that is a voucher or points. Now, recycling incentives are being trialled in the UK to determine if they encourage people to recycle.
Charity Hubbub’s campaign, #LeedsbyExample, introduced recycle reward schemes to Leeds city centre. The trial ran between October and March. They are collating the results from the campaign now. Hubbub creative director Jess Wiles comments that: “The redemption of the vouchers has been extremely low. We are interested to find out a bit more to what motivates people to use those machines. I think it seems to be around the novelty of using it. That it’s fun and playful that it doesn’t necessarily need a financial reward.”
Waste manager Mr Blackburn is not convinced by deposit returns: “There could be incentives, vouchers, competitions, points or you could actually get people believing in it. My gut feeling is that people will become desensitised to incentives over time. It is counterproductive in the end, as you’re taking money out of the system. If you get people believing in it, they’ll do it for free.”
Is it time to break up with plastic?
Although going completely plastic free is not entirely realistic, there are those who try to lead a plastic-free lifestyle
Co-owner of the Jar Tree
You can refill this glass jar as many times as you wish.
Menstrual product as an alternative to pads and tampons
Co-owner of the Jar Tree
Ian Thursfield co-owns a zero-waste store in Leeds city centre called the Jar Tree. He is trying to be as plastic-free as he can and encourages the zero-waste movement. He says: “The main way to live a plastic free life is to follow the mantra of reduce, reuse and recycle. So, buying second hand clothes or reusing food as compost. It’s about reusing – so metal or wooden straws. You can reuse that rather than having some throwaway plastic.
“You go to local markets or shops who are more than willing to let you use your own packaging and can cater to your needs because they want the sales more than a multinational company who by their very nature need things wrapped in plastic to transport around the world.
I have two children they both have cloth nappies and it has been passed down. So, all the plastic through disposable nappies is not there. My partner also uses a mooncup when it is her time of the month, rather than disposable menstrual products.”
If you happen to use plastic which is non-recyclable, because it can be unavoidable: Eco-bricking is a creative way to make use of non-recyclable plastics and is an alternative to landfill. The idea is that you fill plastic bottles with clean, dry and small pieces of cut-up plastic wrappers or film. Then you drop them off at an eco-brick collection point. They are used as building-blocks to make into playgrounds, desks and staircases in developing countries.
Also check out what these artists are doing with their plastic – read here
What comes around goes around? – the circular economy
Until recently, we have had a waste hierarchy which is linear: make, use and dispose. Now, the Government is trying to adopt a circular economy. By circular economy, it means you extract the most value out of a product lifecycle. Going from raw materials to consumption to resource recovery then made back into a product – where the cycle continues.
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As consumers we must do our bit, but there is only so much we can do. Retailers have their responsibility too. We have no influence over the packaging, which is up to the manufacturer. “Consumers have very little choice. It doesn’t matter which supermarket you go to; your cornflakes will be packaged in, exactly, the same way,” says WRWA general manager Mark Broxup.
“If retailers were more responsible, it would influence the behaviour of the consumer more than a local authority at the end of the line can,” adds Mr Broxup.
Retailers could compromise and design their packaging differently. Either by making it recycle-ready or presenting alternatives like bio-plastics. But “the problem with some biodegradable plastics is if you feed them into a recycling stream, they are actually a contaminant,” comments Conrad Hart-Brooke, packaging development at Pladis.
Having an active involvement with local authority is important for retailers, so they meet the needs of a circular economy. “Retailers know how they will package their product in the future. They need to communicate with local authorities, so councils can provide the infrastructure,” says Hart-Brooke, Pladis.
The Waste and Resource Strategy devised by the Government suggests extending producers responsibility through the ‘Polluters Pay’ principle . The idea is that producers pay the costs of managing packaging waste at end of life.
David Harding-Brown, from Packaging Collective, observes: “It describes the polluter as the manufacturer whereas manufacturers don’t throw products away, that’s the consumer. So, polluters pay principle: marvellous.
But equal responsibility should be given along the whole supply-chain - so consumers as well as manufacturer.”
