James, one of the co-hosts of Talking Rubbish, has today written an Opinion piece in The Guardian, responding to the flexible plastic report from Everyday Plastic.
You can read the article here. Episode 13 of Talking Rubbish will be covering this as well.
Restricted by word count, there is loads James couldn’t talk about that I would have loved to; bioplastics, compostables, the debate on incineration vs landfill etc. but the article has to stay focused. Look out for future episodes of Talking Rubbish which will feature these discussions.
As a summary:
We do not think brands or retailers should be claiming recyclability until they demonstrate good recycling rates.
However, there is no value in putting consumers off recycling. We want to see reductions in plastic and consumer consumption but on our journey there we have to capture and recycle what we can. A material that is destined for landfill or incineration if put in our general waste bin will have a much better chance at a second life if instead it is put in the supermarket collection schemes.
Talking Rubbish is always keen to see investigative journalism exploring what is actually happening in the world of recycling but in this instance the situation has improved massively since the last report in 2021. Most tags stayed in the UK. The future is UK sorting and recycling of this material, we don’t want to see valuable material burned or in landfill. So let’s encourage consumers, not put them off!
Again, an interesting report, we want to see less plastic out there but whilst there is no direct replacement for this material readily available at scale, let’s encourage consumers to engage with reuse and recycling.
