It's getting tough out there. Feeling the pinch?

borefest

Thank you all for tips & recipes will try this weekend 

YoungBlueEyes

I haven’t checked if this has been updated but my council sent a thing through the post a few years ago to say wrapping paper is fine in the recycling but not if it has glitter on it. 

Edit - I love the cloth wrapping idea  

Brambling

Two of my sisters and myself use the same gift bag which is recycled around between us, now with no label.  My nephew wraps Christmas paper up in brown paper and will save the masses of stuff sent by Amazon, so it's a little crumbled.  If you have little ones you can use brown paper and get them to decorator with stamps and paint or potato prints.  

Our local council will take any wrapping paper for recycling which passes the scrunch test 

 'All you have to do is get a bit of the wrapping paper in question and crumple it into a ball. Now open your hand and see if the paper stays scrunched together or bounces back open. If the paper stays in its ball, it can be recycled'

tooldle

QueenJess said:

tooldle said:

Aside from the mandatory efforts of supermarkets to reduce plastic in their current packaging, packaging companies are working on alternatives with some focus on biopolymers, as these i am told far easier to degrade. 
I suspect we will see a lot more 'coated' paper and cardboard appearing as food packaging.

I hope not. I fear it screams greenwashing at me and is not a replacement for just getting rid of non-essential packaging. Any company that tells me we can carry on and just switch out one thing for another is definitely greenwashing.

Some of the problems I’ve briefly skim read about (I am definitely not an expert, but I do remain sceptical of such claims) is
- bioplastics being touted as better even though this term is used when only a small proportion is made from ‘eco’ roots and the rest is still from fossil fuels.
- bioplastics being the same compound as traditional plastics once complete and have the same problem with decomposition
- Potential contamination of recycling bins if paper/cardboard is covered in it.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542504823000088

I work in research although this is not my particular area of interest. There is a lot of robust research happening that is  not yet ready for the public domain.

pumpkin89

euronorris said:

And honestly, I think that a better option all round is for all supermarkets to reintroduce butcher counters like those of the past where we take our own reusable and easily washed containers to be filled with whatever meat, poultry, fish we would like.

This is not a way to reduce plastic, it is just a way to reduce the plastic seen by customers.  Meat and fish sold on counters still comes into supermarkets in single-use plastic containers, they just open these up behind the scenes and decant the products onto the counter.

Arguably it's slightly better because the supermarkets will recycle it (because they have to pay a fortune for landfill waste) but that has to be weighed up against all the extra washing involved (customer now has to wash their containers, shop has to thoroughly clean counters every day).

AnimalTribe

Further to the wrapping presents in fabric (which is a great idea). Last year I made a small basic bag from a fabric remnant and sewed a teddy bear made out of felt onto the front of it. This way it became part of my niece's present and she can use it all year round to carry her little bits and pieces about.

Floss

pumpkin89 said:

euronorris said:

And honestly, I think that a better option all round is for all supermarkets to reintroduce butcher counters like those of the past where we take our own reusable and easily washed containers to be filled with whatever meat, poultry, fish we would like.

This is not a way to reduce plastic, it is just a way to reduce the plastic seen by customers.  Meat and fish sold on counters still comes into supermarkets in single-use plastic containers, they just open these up behind the scenes and decant the products onto the counter.

Not in the majority of Morrisons stores which have their own trained butchers & fishmongers.

Arguably it's slightly better because the supermarkets will recycle it (because they have to pay a fortune for landfill waste) but that has to be weighed up against all the extra washing involved (customer now has to wash their containers, shop has to thoroughly clean counters every day).

I think this is done every day anyway, purely to keep in line with food hygiene regulations.

Notes in italics above.

Nonnadiluca

As a family we've been using fabric to wrap presents for years, also gift bags used over and over again - some of us have favourite bags we get year after year. DD has taken this one step further: I write all their birthday cards and envelopes in pencil and she reuses them. Mind you, that's at least partly because she never remebers to buy any!!

pumpkin89

@Floss and how do you imagine the whole fish and the meat joints get to the store in the first place?  There is disposable plastic at every stage of the supply chain.

I'm aware that counters are cleaned every day where they exist.  But today that is only in large Morrisons and Waitrose shops.  euronorris was suggesting that most supermarkets, which nowadays only offer prepacked meat and fish, should reintroduce counters as they had in the past.

euronorris

Doom_and_Gloom said:

euronorris said:

For this reason, our council will not accept any christmas wrapping paper, regardless of whether or not it is plastic free. They ended up with too much contamination and rejected loads. Not only did this mean more stuff ended up in landfill, but fuel was also expended in both directions (to the recycling plant and back). So they have only accepted brown paper at Christmas time for the last few years.

The simple answer is to switch to fabric wrapping and reuse it every year.
My family mostly use festive bedding to do this. Pillow cases for little bits all together as a sack. You can use the festive duvet covers for larger gifts as needed. No need to cut them up.
We have been using the same set for many years now as have my parents. It saves waste and money over time.
You can of course do the same for birthdays. 
You can also just use a piece of fabric that is large enough. I have a largish square scarf that has been used a fair few times to wrap gifts. I took the ideas from Japanese furoshiki; cloth wrapping. 

I've also got gift bags and bottle bags that have been in use many years also.

Unfortunately my OH likes to use wrapping paper for a lot of his gift giving to his family, which he usually buys in the sales.
I do get him to reuse gift/bottle bags where possible (and he does ask for them back if they won't use it again themselves, indeed he's been given ones others had been given gifts in to add to our little collection 😁).

It is a shame that wrapping is being dismissed in recycling if not brown traditional paper. However I understand their reluctance as it isn't always or easily obvious which ones are recyclable Vs those that aren't by glance which is no help for workers.

Yes, I've already started making the switch to fabric wrapping and made several gift wrap bags last year with festive fabric. But it's not cheap/quick to make the move all in one go, so I still have brown paper for wrapping.

We also re-use gift bags. I can't understand why anyone wouldn't. The vast majority of gift bags can be reused soooo many times before they break.

I've come to learn that reducing our negative impact on the planet is not as straightforward as we would like to think. With companies often choosing to tout a different item as the solution. When, as another poster already said, the real answer is for us to reduce. Our older style of shopping is the better option, with butchers, greengrocers and refill type shops which would have a much bigger impact. Whatever way we look at it, recycling still requires more energy to be used.

There's no easy answer, but I do know 2 things - 1. It's better to have many people doing it imperfectly than to only have a handful doing it perfectly and 2. Large corporations have a much bigger impact than the individual and change needs to happen with them first and foremost.