It wasn’t a good thing to begin with (ie. eating tortilla chips) but then I turned the bag around and I was shocked. The plastic bag had written on it “recyclenow.com” and then “BAG – PLASTIC not currently recycled”.
How can this be legal? How can a company be allowed to make a plastic that’s not currently recyclable? That would be so easy to stop.
Here are some of the steps I often think could help solve the plastic problem;
- Encourage consumers to avoid plastics (especially single-use) whenever possible
- Ensure that all plastics made are a recyclable version
- Encourage consumers to recycle correctly
- Ensure that any plastic packaging used by a company is sourced from already recycled plastic
- Ensure that all plastics made are compostable
In essence, we don’t need to create any more new plastics that aren’t compostable. There’s more than enough of them already in this world.
Obviously, this bad was from Aldi but, I’m fairly sure, this will be a problem for most supermarkets. Can we put pressure on supermarkets to stop doing this? Do we put pressure on our government to put laws in place to stop this? Yes, we should do everything we can.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Vanuatu has banned single-use non-biodegradable plastic. That’s a really good move, and I have to ask why the whole world couldn’t do that. I’m sure the answer is that it would annoy some very powerful companies, once again proving that profits are more important than the world that gives us all the profits.
If I was to talk to some of these companies that keep using large amounts of new plastic (it’s very cheap) for their products or packaging, I’d say that we’ve already made enough plastic. If plastic is a good thing and it’s supposed to be recyclable, then don’t make any more – there’s enough in the world already and we should be able to just recycle it. They won’t say it, but one of the answers is recycling is more expensive than making new plastic.
The first thing we can do, with a bit of discipline but without the need for any action from governments or corporations is avoid buying anything in plastic, especially if the plastic isn’t already recycled or not currently recycled. As consumers, we have the ultimate power.
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