Reducing plastic usage

Ben84

That's a good point. Science is about facts, but it can't tell us how to make choices. When we have materials with differing impacts, we can scientifically quantify them and their effects, but ultimately we have to choose which ones are more important to us. To take an easy example, I would always choose plastic over ivory, even though ivory produces little to no pollution compared to plastics. Saving elephants is more important to me than the pollution from the alternative plastic items. Incidentally, the development of plastics to replace ivory and tortoiseshell helped these two animals a lot. Mineral oil also helped save whales who were once used to make lamp oil.

Glass is interesting. It can be recycled over and over again, but it's energy intensive, both to transport and to melt down. In some places, like Russia, it's quite common to collect and clean bottles and jars to use again, which avoids melting them again. Glass is well suited to this as it's non-porous and will withstand cleaning. I save jars for someone who makes jams and pickles, but large scale glass reuse is not common where I live.

Some plastics can also be recycled over and over again. PET (aka polyester) is one as the ester bonds can be broken and reformed over and over again.

Unfortunately I don't know of any way to tell if a can is BPA free or not. I don't eat much canned food because of this. Except for olives, I need olives! I also like canned tomatoes too, I've found they make better flavour and texture sauces and soups. While I can sometimes buy excellent fresh tomatoes, canned are consistently good with a strong flavour. Sainsburys however sell 'canned' tomatoes in tetrapack cartons, which are BPA free, so I buy those now. So, I use maybe one or two cans for olives a month.

jackyann

I have signed up to Ethical Consumer. Once registered with them, you can register your own preferences on a sliding scale: so if a company's attitude to its workers, or animal rights is rather more important to you than its "green" credentials, you can adjust your own personal scale. You then end up with a "score" for different companies to help your choices.

I have been part of the fair trade & ethical trading movement for 40 years, and know that many choices are difficult. I think that we can only do the best we can, support others in their choices, and keep the discussion going (as here). Better to light a candle than complain about the dark!

And thanks to everyone who has posted such interesting information here.

Blue_Doggy

On the subject of recycling of plastic materials, do you know about
these people http://www.polyprint.co.uk/pages/recycling.php ?

They manufacture plastic items, but will also accept some of your plastic waste for recycling - the list in the link tells you which. It's not a complete solution, but should be a help, and at least the ordinary consumer can send the things directly to them.

Re microbeads - there was a time when exfoliation products were available which used ground-up shells from processed fruits (almonds and apricots come to mind). Maybe not ideal for nut-allergy sufferers though. I haven't looked at those products for years though as I now use oatmeal for gentle exfoliation.

Ben84 thank you for the heads-up about Sainsbury's tetrapack tomatoes - they've recently opened a store in a nearby town so would be worth a look.