Have we forgotten the environment?

No, doubt if anyone does.

I thought the same, MawB. To be honest I was quite surprised Greta Thunberg didn't come out and make more of the wonderful clean air we have enjoyed due to the lack of planes etc. People need constant reminders or all the good causes and so many ensuing demonstrations just become befuddled into one.
My garage is also full of plastic supermarket bags from online shopping, the Amazon boxes I put out for recycling.
What I also can't understand is that M &S are now doing collectable kids' toys with the food shopping. OK they say they are made from recycled plastic, but is that any justification?

Extinction Rebellion are planning a protest outside Westminster tomorrow I believe making demands of the Government. The worrying thing as you point out MawB is that neither they nor environmentalists seem to have considered the extra use of plastics. Some are recyclable but people seem to be chucking them down anywhere and some poor soul has to sort them which is not nice with the coronovirus risk.

I think if drinks are served outside it has to be in plastic or rather mustn’t be in glass because of the risk of smashing. This is certainly true of football grounds where we run the bar but aren’t able to open yet with no spectators.

Why isn’t Greta telling us not to have holidays and not to fly which is a major cause of pollution? probably because no one would listen?

I use the plastic bags from supermarkets to carry my recyclables to the bin outside my gate. Again there used to be biodegradable bags so what happened to them?

Sometimes I wonder where we will all end up.

Ellianne

I thought the same, MawB. To be honest I was quite surprised Greta Thunberg didn't come out and make more of the wonderful clean air we have enjoyed due to the lack of planes etc. People need constant reminders or all the good causes and so many ensuing demonstrations just become befuddled into one.
My garage is also full of plastic supermarket bags from online shopping, the Amazon boxes I put out for recycling.
What I also can't understand is that M &S are now doing collectable kids' toys with the food shopping. OK they say they are made from recycled plastic, but is that any justification?

She did, it hasn’t made headlines being pushed out by covid.

There is masses been pushed out tbh

I send my on line Sainsbury's bags (which are usually bags for life) and include them in my bag of donated food for the village food bank.

Or I'd have twelvty million!!

I am worried about the amount of plastic being used because of Covid.

I spent years shopping with my Bags for Life, glad that I didn't have loads of them but now they are back and with each online shop there are more.

This is an issue I’ve been thinking about, too. Maybe it’s swings and roundabouts. I’ve managed to get online shopping for the past six weeks or so and that means I’m not using fuel in my car to to the supermarket, which is quite a way for us, as we’re rural.

I’ve only topped my car up once since March and Dh has filled his twice. Normally I’d be at the petrol station every two weeks or so and Dh, monthly. Does that offset the plastic bags - who knows? We manage to reuse our bags for other purposes or places like food banks will take them here.

The amount of PPE can’t be helped and I imagine is incinerated. I dispose of our masks in the bin, certainly don’t just leave them on the ground. Someone did say to me that maybe the number of masks etc used by ordinary folk is balanced by the lack of festivals this year, which generate hundreds of tonnes of waste.

It’s food for thought, that’s for sure.

Tesco and Sainsburys have recycling stations for plastic bags right outside their entrances so they are easy to dispose of. I think Co-op may have provision too. Some supermarkets are trialing taking back plastic containers too.

Last time I went to Tesco’s recycling station, admittedly before lockdown, it was so chockablock not only was there no room in the bins but loads had been dumped around it.

I posted something similar on another thread this morning.

When I was finally able to get regular deliveries from Sainsbury's, the relief was so huge I gritted my teeth over the plastic bag mountain which is growing at an alarming rate. I suppose there's always a trade off.

DH will light a bonfire. We're miles away from civilization and it's our own land so no guilt will be felt.

It isn’t just all the plastic bags we are getting with our online deliveries.

I went to the hairdressers yesterday.Plastic gown,plastic cape,two disposable towels,disposable face mask.I was just one customer in one hairdressers shop.My hairdresser is following government guidelines,everything has to be disposable.We were both trying to think of ways around it.

Apparently there are now more disposable facemasks in the sea than there are jellyfish.

Our food is delivered in thin single use plastic bags but we have found a use for them.

Our food waste now needs to be put into thin plastic bags, the food is removed at the recycling plant and anaeorobically digested to produce electricity and fertiliser and the bags sent to another processing centre to make electricity.

It's the massive amount of litter being left and being dumped around the countryside that worries me because people were too idle to take their rubbish home and dispose of it properly and because the recycling centres were shut

Merlotgran, plastic bags shouldn’t be burnt as they release a lot of nasties into the atmosphere.

They also do untold damage in the sea, SueDonim.

At least our bonfire won't have bothered any neighbours as we don't have any.

I think there’s a middle way between burning them and releasing carcinogenic and other toxins into the atmosphere or throwing them in the sea.

www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/plastic-bag-bans-can-help-reduce-toxic-fumes