The world’s plastic epidemic is often portrayed as a far-flung problem – one which might cause a bit of unsightly litter on motorway sidings, but not one that could seriously affect our daily lives.

But this could be about to change.

It is a little-known fact that Britain has been selling rubbish to China, paying to pass the buck of our excess garbage, and the proof of our national unsustainability.

According to the BBC, ‘Britain has been shipping up to 500,000 tonnes of plastic for recycling in China every year, but now the trade has been stopped’.

That’s right. With China no longer willing to accept the waste – in a bid to clean up its own outlook – we as a nation will be forced to confront our throw-away, one-use culture, and the staggering quantity of rubbish that this generates.

The solution is for business, homes and manufacturers to be proactive, and to take this opportunity to adopt smart, refillable solutions for the health—not just of the planet—but of the nation.

With Greenpeace reporting that the equivalent of a truck load of plastic is dumped in the sea every minute, things are looking bad for our environment.

But we mustn’t despair.

You don’t have to live in an eco-home or install solar panels to make a difference. There are hundreds of small daily things that everyone can do, which really add up to curb the plastic epidemic. Here are just a few:

• Take your own bags to the shops, and don’t buy food which comes in multiple layers of packaging. Resist the urge to put individual fruits and vegetables in their own bags. Better still, write to the supermarkets and urge them to use less.
• Try out a grocery delivery service. No longer the preserve of the middle-classes, these services are competitive, nationwide, and hugely sustainable. The deliveries are fixed (great for the environment), the boxes are recycled, and the produce is seasonal and organic. What could be better?
• Stop buying bottled water. Just stop. Get a flask. Reuse an old bottle. Fill it up from the tap. If everyone did this, the world would be an instantly less plastic-filled place.
• Reject the offer of a straw. On a night out, at the cinema, wherever. Straws are the ultimate one-use item, and even more pernicious because no one thinks about them. G&T tastes better straight from the glass anyway. 
• Adopt the re-usable coffee cup. The cups aren’t great for the environment, but the plastic lids are a disaster. Many companies now offer reusable coffee cups – even the high street coffee shops themselves – and many offer a discount on your coffee if you have one. Winner!

2018 has the potential to be a fantastic year, one in which we move towards sustainability and the elimination of single-use plastics.

Happy New Year from Vesta!

We all know that plastic is disastrous for the environment, but it is now being revealed that plastics are making their way into our bodies.

We’re consuming plastic every day in our drinking water.

A disturbing report from Orb demonstrates that ‘tap water samples in cities on five continents is contaminated with microscopic plastic fibers. Plastic is pouring out of faucets from New York to New Delhi. Scientists say they don’t know how these fibers reach household taps, or what their health risks might be, but experts suspect plastic fibers transfer toxic chemicals when consumed by humans’.

More than 40% of our plastic containers are single-use, but ‘plastic persists in the environment for centuries’. It is perhaps no wonder that plastics are making their way into our food chain, but what is striking it the worldwide scale of the problem:

‘The contamination defies geography: The number of fibers found in a sample of tap water from the Trump Grill, at Trump Tower in Manhattan, was equal to that found in samples from Beirut. Orb also found plastic in bottled water, and in homes that use reverse-osmosis filters. 83 percent of samples worldwide tested positive for microscopic plastic fibers.’

The government’s recent targeting of single-use plastics could not be more timely, but the revelation that microscopic man-made fibres are now getting into our bodies should encourage us all to resist single-use, and find refillable reusable solutions.

https://www.plasticoceans.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Orb-Media-Plastics-Story-Toolkit.pdf