Plastic waste is the real villain
MoST of us are not scientists, so we tend to believe what we are told about things such as plastic, which is being universally demonised as very bad for us. First it was carrier bags and broken fishing nets in the oceans, typified by being wrapped around sea creatures such as turtles and dolphins and later found in the stomachs of sea mammals and fish, then plastic waste all over our beaches, and the blue planet disaster of oceans of the stuff in the flesh of all of our fish. Then it transferred to land and we were told that microplastic was everywhere in our livestock. Now we are being told that microplastic small enough to be conveyed from the soil is being taken up in vast quantities in the roots and capillaries of our food plants and ingested by us. however, we know that one of the good qualities of plastic is that it keeps food clean and fresh and easy to transport and carry home, another is its huge versatility to make useful things that improve our lives and it is cheap and provides poor countries with modern, easily cleaned, utensils which radically improve their lives. So the bad qualities are all the result of how we dispose of plastic, not how we use it, and yet the main thrust of opinion-formers is on the reduction in the continued use of plastic. But the main question we should all ask ourselves is, if our food is full of microscopic particles of an inert material that is processed through our digestive system and yet we are living longer than ever before, is it really such a villain? Let us use plastic for all its good qualities, but clamp down on the disposal of plastic waste. First, factories making plastics should be subject to strict controls on such waste, secondly the public should be educated in the good use of plastics, and finally we must make rules about the disposal of plastic. This last one would require a total ban on all immoral export of waste to other countries, governments and their scientists to determine a proper national plastic waste strategy, and all waste management authorities and companies in Britain urgently to develop plastic waste collection and disposal. Not science, but straightforward common sense.