Plastic fantastic
How do we escape it?
Plastic is pretty fantastic. It's like weeds*. Much as you might curse their existence, you cannot fail to be struck by their awesome efficiency. Weeds are first to spring up, grab the sunlight, choke off the competition and procreate wildly. Plastic has enjoyed a similar evolutionary trajectory. It has sprung up, and dominated everything, every aspect of the human world (and the animal kingdom), and yes, choked off life in places. As far as plastic's concerned, high fives all round. It's top of the tree. Like a carrier bag, blowing in the wind.
Whenever I drive past a field of crops, in my mind's eye, I package up the harvest into little bags, to be piled onto supermarket shelves. It's enough to make you reach for a plastic blister-pack of anti-depressants.
As with so many environmental problems, we cling to the dismal hope that Market Forces will correct the problem. But with plastic, it only exacerbates it. It isn't just about making products that are prioritised as cheap and convenient above all else. It's about the fragmentation. Let me explain through the medium of chow mein.
I have er quite a few takeaway containers in my Assorted Tat cupboard in the kitchen. And every time I try to use one to store my freshly-whipped houmous (try a spoonful of yoghurt in yours, next time; it's a game-changer, I tell you), it's like some kind of banal round of the Generation Game. The unending hunt for the right lid to fit the container. They all look identical, yet only one will fit. And as I sort through them, my fury rising, it's the needlessness of it that gets to me. Why is it like this? Market Forces.
Free enterprise: Somebody made the original takeaway container. Then somebody saw that and thought, that's a good idea. I want to get in on that action. I can't copy it outright, or I'll get sued. But if I just change the size by a tiny amount, or the shape of the corners, I can make my own takeaway containers and get some of that money. And then 987077777 other people do the same thing, until we get to the point where everyone has a cupboard filled with lids and containers, varying in size and shape by a few, infuriating microns. (This is why I much prefer margarine tubs — you know what lid fits on which container.) However. I am proposing a new idea. Let me give away a billion-dollar business here, in the hope that the right person will see it and run with it.
Global trade uses shipping containers. Big, steel boxes that interlock, and are standardised. Endlessly reusable, universally interchangeable. It's a perfect system. So, why don't we apply that principle to the things that go inside them? I'm proposing universal, interchangeable containers at the consumer level. Imagine if you got the top 10 producers of consumer foods to agree on one jam jar. One cereal box. One bottle. One reusable can. They can put all the distinguishing labels they please on them, from the dynamic swoosh of Coca-Cola to the iconic bulge of the Marmite label. But the actual vessels are no different to those used by Pepsi or peanut butter. Consumers would pay a deposit on each container, refunded when they returned them, washed, to the supermarket, to be returned to the manufacturer, proportionally, according to sales.
I'm aware that I am someone who, by trade, bangs a tin tray over my head for coins, but surely there is something in this idea. Isn't there? DOES ANYONE KNOW ALAN SUGAR.
*I know there's no such thing as a weed, just a plant in the wrong place, but I have a LOT OF PLANTS IN THE WRONG PLACE, OK, and frankly, yes, YES, after six hours hard at it, yes, they ARE blimming WEEDS.