Zero waste, plastic-free, MoneySaving Christmas

MSE_Andrea wrote: »

Interesting.

I'm not sure I'm convinced but I'll certainly take the view on board and think about it

I'm thinking a lot of people are spending a lot of effort trying to avoid plastics, and the environmental benefits are questionable. In many cases replacing plastics with glass, paper and metal will increase resource and energy consumption, creating a greater environmental impact - which is not the intention at all.

A big concern for people is plastic in the sea - but do the plastics we use here in the UK contribute to this? If not, us avoiding them isn't going to address this problem. The actual source of ocean plastic appears to be almost entirely third world and developing countries:

https://www.treehugger.com/ocean-conservation/these-10-rivers-appear-be-source-millions-tons-ocean-plastic.html

Not to say we shouldn't be careful here, I do bag everything tightly to keep it together and give it some weight, so it doesn't blow out the bin or on it's way to the power station. However, once it leaves my house, I live in a country with a good rubbish disposal infrastructure and believe the chances my bagged rubbish not safely reaching the power station are very low.

I just don't think there's much grounds for people in Europe or other developed countries to replace plastics with other materials. The net outcome, considering they're more energy and resource intensive, is likely to be more harmful than beneficial. I'm not saying buy plastics without any cares, but they have their place as functional, minimally resource intensive materials when needed, and we can dispose of them quite safely here.

bugslet wrote: »

Once you start looking at total life costs, it gets quite complicated. Pre getting rid of plastic bags, I read a discussion about how much more environmentally unfriendly paper bags were to produce over plastic carrier bags and then add in that paper bags take up far more space on a trailer. I can't remember how many trailers it said it took to move say a million paper/plastic bags, but it was a very big difference.

It's complicated when you take in the full life cycle of any product!

It has been studied though!

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291023/scho0711buan-e-e.pdf

It's a big report, but what I take away from it in summary is that single use, disposable plastic bags are pretty efficient when used once. All other types only reduce resource use below single use plastic bags when reused a number of times. How many times varies, but interestingly, the cotton bag - something many people consider greenest, needs the most reuse. It has to be reused between 131 to 393 times just to break even with regular plastic bags. 131 single use bags are equivalent to one cotton bag, and if you reuse those plastic bags just once for bin liners, things get even worse for the cotton bag.

Certain eco-assumptions, like plastics are bad and natural materials are best can lead people to bad choices. Reusable can be good, but natural materials are often not as green as they look. We easily overlook how much resources go in to making them. Cotton is natural, but the process to grow and manufacture it takes a lot of steps and resources. Reusable plastic bags however don't need many reuses to start saving resources compared to disposable. It's the same efficient material, just stronger and much longer lasting. So, my shopping bags are reusable plastic. Cotton is better saved for clothing I think.

bugslet wrote: »

Hi Ben

Good and interesting posts!

What I meant when I said it's complicated, is that for the average person to make an informed choice, they have to be motivated enough to actually consider the differences and factor in the manufacturing and transport.

I'm with you to some degree on plastics not being totally evil, though I think that if we could just get rid of the 'need' for our apples to come in trays and satsumas in nets along with any number of other throw away items, would be a good start.

Alert - ewww factor in the next paragraph!

I still use around three plastic carrier bags a day - 3 dogs ( one quite large) and use the bags for the obvious along with kitchen towel. I really hate the hot from the oven feel with standard poo bags and one bag means all donations from the three dogs go in one bag on a walk, rather than three bags.

BTW, I live half a mile from a TPS.

Hi bugslet

Ah, yes, I see now, it's a bit of work to delve in to the details. I didn't really realise the disparity between the energy use of plastics vs. other common alternative materials until I worked a little with plastics. Full disclosure - I'm not in the plastics industry and don't have a financial anything to do with them :rotfl:. I did briefly work with them some years ago and was impressed with how much work a small amount of materials and energy could achieve when using them. Poor disposal however is a problem. I'm just not convinced we should mass abandon them and their strong benefits to address this when disposal is the point when things go wrong - and it appears that poor disposal isn't commonplace here.

Well, my fruit and vegetables from the market are overall much less packaging intensive than supermarkets. Many things, like apples and potatoes are reasonably durable, so they come to market in large card boxes rather than individual packaging - and I put them in my reusable bag, so their total packaging use is minimal. Markets are a different situation to supermarkets however. At the supermarket they want to shelve things quickly, and densely. Packaging helps. They also want to identify things fast and scan it fast, so bar coded packaging helps. Also, in cases where there's multiple types of similar items at different prices, for example different varieties of apples, packaging makes it possible to consistently tell which is which. It has a purpose, but if we want to avoid it, markets and greengrocers are better. I would imagine a lot of food bought in the UK now comes through supermarkets however.

UK plan to tackle plastic waste threat

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42397399


A four-point plan for tackling plastic waste has been outlined by the Environment Secretary Michael Gove.