VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET AND HELP REDUCE PLASTIC WASTE

IT’S unfair for people to call for Asda staff to be fired for ‘unethical’ (pricy and wrapped in plastic) prepared ‘bits’ (of fruit) which they are selling to go with party drinks.

Although there are always some with more money than sense and the packaging of food in single-use plastics is a vice we’re choking our environments with, purchasers don’t (as far as I can see) have to buy lines, especially when sold at rip-off prices.

Haven’t we all felt flabbergasted when unpacking the shopping to find how much litter we’ve brought in from the supermarket?

A lot of it may be necessary to keep food fresh, clean and undamaged. But we have been nurtured into expecting and demanding unblemished food when we want it from anywhere – and for it to be ‘as good’ as newly picked.

A few weeks ago we had a day out to Rhos on Sea. Lying on the beach I was horrified by the amount of plastic amongst the shells breaking down to make sand.

There might not be a turtle in a multipack sheet of polythene, but the detritus of our civilisation was all too clear as the promenade shop sold crate-loads of cheap tat, much of which wouldn’t last 24 hours and would end up adding to our footprint.

Yes, supermarkets could be leading customers to more sustainable choices, but hey, there’s fat bucks to be made from presenting them with a ‘modern’ answer and in this online order and deliver world the factory processed and packed will always win out over the brown paper bag.

But we consumers have a responsibility as well. Quite simply, don’t buy it and tell the manager and staff what you are doing and why. Then walk to the corner shop or market and buy something without the wrapping.

But an environmental transition should be fair to those who will be impacted.

Government – if it cared – could and should motivate change with a plastics tax, perhaps using some of the take to support packaging companies retool to less damaging modes of business and our universities can play a role in developing new sustainable packaging materials – look at the potato starch ‘plastic bags’ so many magazines come through the post in.

Current packaging is unsustainable but there’s something for everybody in such a future.

J Josson