Companies, actively creating (more) plastic.

Harryhumanity

So...I noticed this new brand immerging lately "Chopped"...salads, eat healthy..blaa, blaa...but the amount of plastic waste I seen after lunchtime was horrible...large clear plastic containers, unrecyclable. I mean there are many biodegradable opinions for hold food for a maximum of 20-30mins at most...
...there are not enough "fines" to prevent spurious waste for short use plastic... opinions

Skedaddle

Ireland's plastic use is currently at the very top of the EU league table and not just by a small amount. We are using far too much plastic and it's actually increasing rather than going down.

I don't really see any evidence at all of government policy to curb use.

Harryhumanity

Skedaddle wrote: »

Ireland's plastic use is currently at the very top of the EU league table and not just by a small amount. We are using far too much plastic and it's actually increasing rather than going down.

I don't really see any evidence at all of government policy to curb use.

Typically Irish eh?.. ..I was really thinking to myself there is a huge amount of one-off packaging used for food, you intend eat almost immediately.

Wanderer78

We must not 'interfere with the market', as it knows best! It is all knowing!

Grab All Association

Stanley 8 cooker and a lighter. Free hot water and heating.

Skedaddle

I'm not sure that it's typically Irish. It's similar to the kinds of attitudes you see in the US and other English-speaking countries tbh.
I know the UK's talking the talk on plastic, but the stats don't lie and they're not doing all that great on it either.

Also, I wouldn't buy the notion that the Irish Government isn't capable of regulating a market when it wants to. We took extremely hard lines on smoking and tobacco sales and tried to implement minimum pricing on alcohol (which is being challenged in the EU by several other countries being lobbied by the drinks industry).

We need to tackle plastic waste at source. It's not good enough to just expect consumers to change everything when they're being presented with limited choices.

Wanderer78

Skedaddle wrote:

We need to tackle plastic waste at source. It's not good enough to just expect consumers to change everything when they're being presented with limited choices.

Completely agree, and this is where my idea of 'the creator pays principal' comes in, it is not good enough that we just have a 'polluter pays principal', some fantastic work has been achieved at tackling these problems by having it, but this is not the only problem regarding waste, i.e. we need to reduce our overall creation of materials in the first place, and this must be done at the beginning of the process.

Skedaddle

A short sighted view on this will also result in costs to the exchequer either in the form of fines or having to deal with recycling companies that can't find markets for lots of low grade plastic waste.

Everything's being pushed onto the consumer and I think ultimately that will result in the electorate getting annoyed with the Government as they see it as nothing but a revenue raising exercise.

Also you end up with backfiring of the system where you cause a whole rake of misuse of waste streams and illegal dumping as charges keep going up.

If we don't deal with this ASAP, I think we are headed for a waste crisis.

Wanderer78

Skedaddle wrote: »

A short sighted view on this will also result in costs to the exchequer either in the form of fines or having to deal with recycling companies that can't find markets for lots of low grade plastic waste.

Everything's being pushed onto the consumer and I think ultimately that will result in the electorate getting annoyed with the Government as they see it as nothing but a revenue raising exercise.

Also you end up with backfiring of the system where you cause a whole rake of misuse of waste streams and illegal dumping as charges keep going up.

If we don't deal with this ASAP, I think we are headed for a waste crisis.

and this is where i believe 'the polluter pays principle' fails. 'the polluter' in this case is seen as the end user, i.e. the emphasis is largely solely on the end user and the end of life of materials, but is not necessarily true. there is something fundamentally wrong with this thinking, as it almost gives a free reign to rest of the global production system of our goods, to do what it wants, even if it means having negative effects on our environment.

i do think there has been fantastic positive effects by the creation of ideas such as the polluter pays, but it hasnt gone far enough, and unfortunately theres virtually little or no political will to change this, even pro environmental politicians and parties such as the green party arent going far enough with this thinking. there seems to be an overall fear of tackling the fundamental issues of our global production system, for example, 'the market' is portrayed as being all knowing and efficient, but this is not the case. i do agree with you, if we keep persisting with ultimately blaming the end user for our pollution issues, we will continue to see an increase in disengagement with such policies, resulting in things such as illegal dumping and burning etc.

Skedaddle

They forget that while industries can lobby, moan in public about costs and jobs and even take legal challenges and so on, they’re not voters and political parties’ currency is votes.

You can’t just expect citizens to shoulder the burden for this. The producers are getting a free ride at our expense and also at our environment’s expense.

jaxxx

I still find it shocking how in this day and age there is so much material that is not recyclable. Just take for example the amount of non recyclables in your weekly shop? And so much of that crap, plastic especially, is ending up in the oceans and becoming seriously hazardous to wildlife. It's sickening. Governments worldwide really need to get their heads out of the clouds and start forcing the producers of these non-recyables materials into action, rather than putting the burden onto the end user.

Skedaddle

What makes it worse is that most of them provide little / no advantage over recyclable versions. In a lot of cases the problems are choices of multilayer plastics, plastic coatings and so on.

If there's no cost to the producers, they'll just keep on churning this stuff out and it's the ordinary person who foots the bill and deals with the consequences in the long term either by charges, costs via taxation or environmental damage.

A lot of things that were once durable goods are also now semi disposable. Take a look at most domestic whitewoods (washing machines, dishwashers etc.) They were expected to last at last a decade in the past if not longer. Nowadays, only handful of expensive brands are capable of doing that while many of them seem to end up in recycling / landfill within 2 to 3 years because people are only paying €199 for a washing machine, which is basically an impossibly low price. Either it's made out of absolute junk or by slave labour, or both.

Until you start making the producers face up to the costs that they are burdening society with, they will just keep on doing it.