The uncomfortable truth about plastic

Plastic is a tricky one. The only sustainable answer, at the moment, is to treasure the plastic you have, reuse it as much as possible and resist buying any single-use plastic. Growers should stop selling plants in flimsy plastic pots and use really strong ones that can be reused rather than so-called ‘recycled’ – charging accordingly.

The uncomfortable truth is that there is little or no reliably successful recycling of plastic. No gardener – including me – ‘recycles’ their plastic. We just put it aside to be taken somewhere else by someone else. The latest studies show that burning black plastic is the least damaging way to dispose of it, which is a measure of how far we are from dealing with the problem of the mountains of plastic in our lives. There are alternatives such as making your own soil blocks for seed sowing, using wooden trays or cardboard pots.

Discover more from the BBC’s science and environment correspondents in dedicated BBC online resources to help us all understand the bigger picture.

Go to bit.ly/BBC-climate-change

And look out for David Attenborough’s Green Planet series on the BBC in the new year.