How to solve the plastic problem
Let’s rid food of its ridiculous packaging for one, but there are many more initiatives in the pipeline...
XANTHE CLAY
hat a difference two years makes. Back in October 2017, the BBC’s Blue Planet II aired. The final episode, detailing the disastrous impact of plastic waste on the oceans, was a wake-up call that resonated around the world. Groups such as Greenpeace and Wrap, which campaigns for less waste, found overnight that their mantra – to stop overusing plastic – had gone from minor to mainstream. Plastic straws were quickly banished
A crab trapped in a plastic cup in Verde Island Passage in the Philippines from smart bars (as well as Wetherspoons and McDonald’s), and reusable water bottle sales soared. Milkmen with glass bottles are back, with orders at the Milk&More delivery company surging. Even my local high street in Bristol has a shiny new Scoop Wholefoods shop, resolutely plasticfree and selling chocolate granola and wild Camargue rice in reusable cotton bags. It is a world away from the grungy scoop shops of my youth.
Supermarkets are rushing to catch up, according to Helen Bird, a plastics specialist for Wrap, which is behind the Plastics Pact that aims to make all plastic in the UK compostable, reusable or recyclable by 2025. Dozens of big industry players have signed up, including all the major supermarkets, McDonald’s, Kraft Heinz, Boots and Pret. But while supermarkets such as Waitrose have seen some success with their scoop-shop style dispensers, it is still no small task, warns Bird: “We have all seen examples of ridiculous packaging, but in the majority of cases it is there for a good reason.”
Soft fruit, for example, may be packed directly into those plastic punnets in the field so they don’t get bruised, and can reach us without turning to mush. Mushrooms, on the other hand, would keep far better in a paper bag than the usual cling film-wrapped tray. “So it’s about re-evaluating the whole of their supply chains to completely rethink the way they deliver products to people and the way that we buy food in particular. [The system has] evolved around plastic, which has given us this amazing convenience, so that we can buy whatever we want whenever we want pretty much 365 days a year.”
Some changes are already in place or about to “go live”. Sainsbury’s, which Bird singles out for its commitment, this month ditched single-use bags in its produce aisles, and will phase out black, nonrecyclable plastic trays by the end of the year. Iceland’s “reverse vending” plastic bottle-return scheme, which gives 10p credit per bottle deposited, recently collected its millionth bottle. Tesco, which also has a reverse vending machine, will next year work with Loop, a service which collaborates with manufacturers such as Unilever and Pepsi to deliver your usual products, but in reusable containers which can be returned and refilled.
Reusing and reducing are good news, as recycling plastic is fraught with issues. The multiple types and colours commonly in use make sorting confusing, and with rules set by individual councils there is no consistent nationwide system. War on Plastic, on BBC One, highlighted how huge amounts of the plastic we send abroad for recycling ends up in vast rubbish dumps in the developing world. Last year China, once the recipient of much of our recycling, stopped taking most waste materials, forcing us to burn
But many shoppers still want shrink wrap and trays pristine washed ones (never mind that root veg doesn’t last as well once washed), and then the same veg in plastic bags or even arranged on trays and wrapped in cellophane. Now, as likely as not, your carrots will be not just washed and packaged but chopped into batons as well.
And apparently we like them like that. Iceland trialled a packaging-free greengrocery section in a shop in Liverpool but, says Walker, sales dropped by 20 per cent. “What we found is that regardless of how passionately people feel about reducing their plastic footprint, price and convenience is still of major importance to them.”
Hygiene too: people feel food is cleaner if it is wrapped. The company is launching a larger trial in January with fruit and vegetables in cardboard instead of plastic.
There are a number of problems with losing plastic, not least that it makes it harder to see what you are buying. One solution is a translucent paper, “like a thinner version of greaseproof paper”, says Bickley, as well as cardboard with holes in. “Customers absolutely love the cleanliness of plastic, the cheapness, convenience and visibility,” says Walker. “It is a miracle material, fantastic in many ways; it is just our frivolous use of it that is the problem.”
In addition, suppliers and shops insist that plastic makes fruit and vegetables last longer. “When you wrap something in plastic you create a barrier, and then you put holes in exactly the right amount to match the respiration rate of that fruit or vegetable, to make the product go to sleep. That is how you increase life,” says Bickley. Shrink-wrapped cucumber will last about three times as long as an unwrapped one, says the Cucumber Growers Association, and will be protected during its bumpy ride from the farm in Spain, say, to warehouse, ferry, distribution centre, store and finally your home – meaning less food waste.
But, even so, isn’t the right thing to just remove the plastic and ask customers to be more understanding?
Walker tells me: “The problem is if you go out on a limb as a retailer, expecting behavioural change from consumers. The chances are it won’t work because they will just peel off elsewhere. It is about a full system change.”
Making the more radical changes (if that is what you call selling apples without a tray or bag) requires everyone to get on board.
That probably means Government intervention, and there are plans for legislation next year requiring packaging producers to pay the full cost of the collection, sorting, disposal and recycling of their output.
There’s no doubt that a bit of stick, rather than carrot, works. For years retailers tried to give customers incentives such as loyalty points to reuse plastic bags, with poor results. But the 5p bag charge, introduced in England in 2015 after its success in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, made the take-up of single-use bags drop by 86 per cent. There are plans to double the charge to 10p next year.
Reducing plastic packaging can have unforeseen consequences too, Walker tells me. When Iceland changed the packaging on their luxury steak from a rigid black plastic tray to a cardboard one, stealing went through the roof. The cardboard “was very bendable, so shoplifters could stick it down their trousers”. The store is switching to a more rigid moulded fibre tray.
As Walker says, it’s all part of the journey. “We have a mountain to climb, but I am pretty sure we can.”
The amount of plastic in the world’s oceans
The amount of plastic that goes on sale in the UK annually – 48 per cent of that is packaging
The amount of plastic taken for recycling by local authorities in 2017
The number of times you need to reuse a supermarket bag-for-life to equal the carbon footprint of four singleuse bags
The length of time it takes for a plastic bottle to decompose – so if Shakespeare had drunk Evian, the bottle would still be around today more, with potential pollution fallout. The price of new or “virgin” plastic recently dropped below that of recycled plastic for the first time, making it less appealing for manufacturers to use recycled plastic. So-called “compostable” plastic often takes years to break down, and only in industrial composters. Some may even release harmful microplastics into the soil.
But don’t give up on recycling. It’s definitely part of the picture, though third choice after reducing and reusing. New UK-based systems are better at sorting recycling, and Tesco has been trialling collections of “soft plastic” like crisp packets and shrink wrap. It’s not generally recyclable but can be turned into Plaxx, an oil that can be used to make a fresh batch of plastic.
Industry insiders point out that single-use plastic was embraced by the food industry because it was so lightweight – which cuts the environmental cost of production and transport (including to recycling or disposal) compared to glass, paper and cardboard. And it is good at some aspects of hygiene – no one wants raw chicken juice seeping though paper and on to their lettuces.
There are new plastic alternatives in the pipeline too, including the brainchild of the UK winner of this year’s James Dyson award, 23-year-old Lucy Hughes from the University of Sussex. Hughes has invented a substance which behaves like plastic, but is stronger, fully biodegradable and made out of fish scales and algae.
Iceland’s MD Richard Walker is a keen surfer, which may account for his evangelical approach to reducing plastic, and the commitment to remove plastic from Iceland’s own-brand products by 2023, well ahead of other supermarkets.
It’s hard to imagine frozen food without layers of plastic (peas, for example). But in fact, says Stuart Bickley, head of application development for Iceland, “frozen is a good place to start as you are less reliant on the packaging for the preservation. If you go to other parts of the world you will see frozen vegetables in cardboard, not bags.” Instead of a plastic coating on the cardboard, they will use water-based polymer coating, “because the freezing is doing the hard work”.
What about fruit and veg then? Somehow, in the space of a few decades, we have gone from the greengrocer selling muddy carrots to
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