How can we get rid of plastic waste?

Last week, as I was standing by the fruit and veg section at Waitrose and finding that even loose items needed to be put in a plastic bag, I had a light bulb moment.

Instead of tieing the bag tightly after I had put the veg in the bag then tearing it open when I got home and recycling the plastic. I tied a looser knot, undid it when I got home and last week's bags are in my shopping bag ready to be reused when I go shopping tomorrow. With care I reckon that I should be able to reuse these bags ten times or more before they are recycled..

There is a article in the paper today saying that London is going to install water fountains around the city to try to reduce the use of plastic water bottles. That sounds like a good idea for other cities to follow.

Yes, I first heard of Boyan Slat a couple of years ago and think his system is amazing. But it doesn't solve the problem of plastic waste, as several comments below the video note.

We have to stop plastic going into the sea now as there is more going in than this system can realistically hope to retrieve.

What are we going to do with the retrieved plastics as a great many of them are not currently recyclable

What about the fragments of plastic from broken up old waste that are too small to be captured and what about the microplastics which are currently being used, which can be ingested by fish and other marine creatures and which cause them to starve because they fill the stomach without providing any nutrition

I think we have a long, long way to go yet.

There's a Dutch foundation called the Ocean Cleanup. It was started by a man called Boyan Slat, who's now 23. It started when he was diving in Greece when he was 16 and saw more plastic than fish.

He has worked out a way to clean up a lot of the plastic in the oceans, has crowdfunded the money he needs and is just about to deploy a test cleanup beam in the North Sea. I don't think I can do it justice with a write-up, but here's a link to a video explaining how it works. It's a remarkable story.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=du5d5PUrH0I

Perhaps if fruit and veg is not available except in packaging then shoppers could remove all the packaging after paying and before leaving the till point and leave it on the conveyor belt.
They may get the message.
However, most of them do sell loose fruit and veg.

I have emailed Ocado to ask if at least one of a group of items could be in recyclable packaging and that it could be marked with a clear green R so we could spot it. So we have the choice of ordering that even if the produce did not store so well have also emailed the Times to see if they could wrap their supplements up in paper..
As someone said pester them.

I remember my mum buying f&v from the greengrocer, with the different items wrapped in newspaper. Tomatoes (only bought in summer!) went into brown paper bags, and bananas and oranges went in loose.

Where are the more upmarket shops? I would have thought they might lead the way..

Do keep up Asda.......one of their branches near me stopped selling loose fruit and veg last autumn. I popped in today and the only loose items were bananas and carrots. As a result you have to buy the amount they decide when often you might only want a small quantity.

That's only another seven years - do they have a large stock of packaging I wonder?

Did anyone watch the BBC programme 'Inside the Factory' the other evening? They featured the Ribena/Lucozade factory - all their bottles are made from recycled plastic. The plastic is recycled in The Netherlands from other plastic bottles and so the cycle continues.

Fruit and veg in plastic bags get all sweaty and unpleasant. To stop this happening the supermarkets now have chiller units in their fruit and vegetable racks

MacDonalds are going to do away with plastic by 2025, they have announced.

If we had been shoppng in the 40s and 50s, we'd have taken with us a basket or a leather, fabric or "rexine" bag. The shop assistant would have weighed our our potatoes and poured them into the bag, then our onions and carrots, then our sprouts, cooking apples and eating apples. She (or he( mwouild have totted up the cost as they went on apaper bag. If we were buying half a pound ofbiscuits (loose from a tin) they'd have gone in that paper bag. If not, it would have been used for the next person to buy something that really needed to be kept clean. If we were extra fussy, we kept a few paper bags and took them with us for the more dainty vegetables.

Meranwhile, we took our shopping home, transferred the veg to a vegetable rack in the larder and - wait for it, this is the important bit - washed them when we were going to use them. Surely we still do that washing bit? If so, why do they need to all be in little sterile separate plastic bags? And if we prefer them that way, why not keep back a few clean bags from the recycling/landfill to use again?

Mumsnet has caught up!
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3141550-to-not-use-the-little-fruit-and-veg-bags

I had a grapefruit juice and soda last night and, before I could stop her, the waitress had plonked in a plastic stirrer.
There’s an obvious example of something that can easily be replaced by a thin wooden spatula or, even better, nothing at all. Just convincing that particular chain of hotels that getting rid of stirrers and straws would help. I’ll send Premier inn an e-mail in the morning.?

They will simply change it to cardboard, I think the report said.

Iceland have announced they are to totally replace all their plastic packaging. It will take 5 years though.
DH told me that earlier today - when I started quizzing him on how, when etc he said he didn't know, he wasn't their MD.

How will they package frozen food - does anyone know?
Well done Iceland, let's hope that others follow.

What about using biodegradable nappy sacks instead of poo bags? They're widely available. We use them to dispose of solid waste from our cats' litter tray.

would love an alternative to the poo bags that I use religiously. Anyone supply bio degradable bags?
Hate to see dog bags discarded and if i'm on a country walk will always dispose by using a stick to knock off pathway into bracken. Hate to think where all the dog bags are emptied by the council?

It looks as though customer 'pester power' can work! We need to make our preferences known to whoever supplies us with goods that we don't want extraneous or plastic packaging.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42704291

Such a minor thing -but it is much better to open bags and compost tea leaves, and throw bag in bin.

Whatever measures are taken locally to control waste the result always seems to be more fly tipping!

I had wondered why my tea bags took so long to compost -thanks for that info.

You can buy bamboo toothbrushes- but here in Switzerland, and if I remember rightly, in many whole foods in the uk- plastic handles with a snap on head. Same here in Switzerland- one handle can last for 10 -20 or more brush head changes. We now use one electric toothbrush- with one small brush head each.

As Jalima says- the power of large industries is so strong. Same for sugar, or plam oil, etc. With a collapsing industry- and with it incoming taxes (for those who do pay them ) - the GVT will be wary of putting pressure on them. The plastics and packaging industry is worth billions- with large plants and specialised machinery producing it.

Iceland have announced they are to totally replace all their plastic packaging. It will take 5 years though.

Just wondering ..... We were talking with family about things we use made from plastic. Most are in the kitchen and bathroom. What did toothbrushes used to be made from? I have no memory of them being anything other than plastic.