Ruth and Eamonn
As the Prime Minister sacks Claire Perry, the woman in charge of running the UN climate summit in Glasgow later this year, our columnist Ruth Langsford, the woman in charge of recycling in her house, has her say...
that even so? Why am I made to recycle – yet manufacturers are not? Why allow this stuff to be made in the first place, and why has it become our problem?!
Why, when I buy four juicy pears, do they come in a polystyrene container with a non-recyclable plastic cover which is then encased in non-recyclable clingfilm? Honestly, it’s enough to make me choke. I won’t, but we all know there will be a beautiful seal somewhere that will. I already take my reusable shopping bags when I go to the supermarket, and I’ve now bought cotton netting bags, so I can carry my fruit and veg. But it’s not enough. All of us mean well – but we can’t do this on our own. Am I alone in thinking the guilt is being passed on to my shoulders, when it’s someone else who is creating the mess?
Why aren’t the supermarkets providing paper bags, or cardboard boxes? Why is all of this down to us? We are to blame. It’s always our fault. Well, it’s not.
If the government was serious about the state of this planet, then they could decree that all single-use plastic would be banned in, say, three years’ time. Companies would have ample time to adapt. I am old enough to remember shopping in the Sixties and Seventies when so little plastic existed. My mother can tell me about shopping in the Fifties, when there was no plastic at all. We used to do without it, why can’t we now?
Because plastic is made from petrol chemicals and governments have too much of a vested interest in protecting the oil barons, the jobs they create and the taxes they pour into the Treasury. So, stop blaming us when we have no control about what our toothbrush is made from, how our cosmetics are packaged and how our food is served up.
By blaming the consumer, they are kicking the can and indeed the plastic bottle further down the road. As if our lives aren’t guilt-ridden enough, here is another example where we want to do the right thing, but because of the scale of the problem, we are all failing miserably, even when we think we are not.
So, stop cracking down and fining us for accidentally putting the wrong thing in the wrong bin. Put your money where your recycling bin is, and fine the producers of plastic - not the consumers!