HEAVIN’ CHEMISTRY

Remember British Rail’s problems with the ‘wrong type of snow’? The wrong type of plastic is more worrying…

Plastic waste makes up 85% of the pollution on beaches around the world, and every year the UK alone throws away 300 million kilos of flexible plastics.

That means things like supermarket shopping bags, bubblewrap, food packaging and pallet wrapping that are not accepted by councils for recycling.

We recycle just 50% of plastic packaging, so what makes brands like Gomi (see left) so important is that they stop flexible plastics being incinerated and releasing poisonous gases into the air. The company has even gone a step further by making its products repairable and recyclable all over again.

Fortunately more and more product designers are starting to take this route, but it needs big business to take note.