the slogan “reduce, reuse, recycle” has been around for\nat least 20 years now, but these days its seems that, at least in\nterms of government or civic policies, the only thing people are\ninterested in is “recycle”. if we all put a bit more effort\ninto “reduce”, we’d have a hell of a lot less to recycle –\nbut the manufacturers of the world are doing everything they can to\nprevent that from happening; obviously there’s profit in plastic.\nandy & i are pretty aware shoppers and wherever possible avoid\npackaging, but even so our plastic recycling bag fills up nearly\nevery week. this plastic – which includes packaging from things like\ncheese, tofu, miso, and other things that seem to be impossible to\nbuy without buying plastic – apparently gets recycled into things\nlike fabric for clothes produced in china. but what kind of a\nsolution is that? what happens when the clothes are worn out? are\nthey recycled again? what’s the environmental cost of the plastic\nfabric processing? & is it really a good thing for us to be\nwearing plastic clothes?
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\nwe don’t want excess packaging –\nbut it’s forced onto us by manufacturers. something like 95% of all\nplastic is thrown out within six months of being purchased, & the\npercentage that gets thrown out as soon as an item is taken home must\nalso be very high. campaigns where people remove and leave excess\npackaging at the check-out counter have been happening for years but\nseem to have made little difference. these days there are facebook\ngroups with people fed up with packaging – it is absolutely not what\nconsumers want. & yet the manufacturers keep doing it, more &\nmore & more. it’s difficult to buy things like pens, or reels of\ncotton thread, or nails, without buying plastic packaging as well.\nhow can we make them stop encasing everything in plastic????\narguments about convenience can no longer carry any weight against\nthe massive environmental damage caused by plastic.
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\nthings\nthat it seems impossible to buy without buying plastic packaging:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
food packaging is the biggest single\nmarket for plastics, and it does not use any recycled plastics\nbecause of hygiene concerns. despite lots of promotion about\nrecycling, still most food packaging, drink bottles, etc ends up in\nlandfills. there is lots of information online about plastics\nrecycling, but the real issue to work on is REDUCTION.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"