Plastics benefits

Never a day passes without news about the negative effects of plastic and what to do with it.

The positive aspects of plastic are never mentioned. Plastic packaging has kept our food safe for decades. Without plastic packaging there would be no frozen meat, frozen vegetables and ice cream and many other foods. Ice cream in waxed cardboard is no solution. Yoghurt and milk in glass bottles/ containers would create other huge environmental problems.

Nobody ever mentions the thousands of tonnes of paper delivered to letter boxes each year. The paper lobby did a much better job than the plastic lobby.

No doubt we use far too much plastic packaging but don't blame the plastic industry, blame the lazy consumer who reaches for the pre-packed fruit and vegetables and can't be bothered to bring re-usable fruit or shopping bags, not to mention coffee-to-go in disposable cups.

The way we collect recyclables is a disaster. Paper and glass has to be kept out of the blue bin.

In European countries, you will find huge disposal bins for glass and paper. This is free raw material for the appropriate industries. Plastic requires a great deal of energy to recycle and causes more greenhouse gases to enter the stratosphere.

Plastic is an energy carrier and the most efficient way to recycle it is to burn it in modern electricity generating plants. The CO2 emitted by a modern high tech incinerator is definitely less than what is generated by the vessels carrying plastic waste to Malaysia or China and what they do with it there is questionable.

Siegfried Jordan, Royal Oak.