Stores must put the planet before profit

I APPLAUD the supermarkets for their initial attempts to reduce plastic waste by eliminating single use plastic carrier bags.

However, a genuine reduction in plastic pollution will involve an acceptance that profits will be impacted – for the supermarkets and some of their suppliers – for the greater good.

If supermarkets and other shops really want to make a significant contribution, they need to take a long look at bottled water. In this country and many others, water from the tap is safe, yet every time I enter a supermarket I see hundreds of plastic bottles of water, often crated in plastic wrap.

The cost of the water is minimal it is the plastic bottles, wrapping, manufacture and transport that makes up the vast majority of the fee for what is essentially a free resource.

Recent research has also shown how few of the bottles are recycled and how many are littering our once-clean and beautiful countryside.

A business that really wanted to make an impact on plastic pollution (not to mention the warming by fossil fuel used in manufacture and transport) would stop selling disposable water bottles straightaway.

It would be setting up water fountains in every store and selling refillable drinks containers at cost, with incentives that persuade people to buy, keep and reuse them by topping up with water for free.

It would be providing work packs for schools to explain why this is a good idea and use the media to reinforce the explanation.

Any retailer that did this would be making a genuine statement about valuing the environment.

It would be proving to their customers that our environment matters more than profits, and that the future of the Earth, that all of our children will inherit, matters most!

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