Please, just give us the heads-up on plastic

If firms and consumers are to help save the planet, we have to be better informed on how to go about it

Fifteen years ago, I spent £60,000 on something that I thought would provide an environmental benefit, but it turned out to be the exact opposite. The product in question was oxo-degradable plastic: 50 tonnes of the stuff. I’d bought it after being encouraged by my colleagues, who thought it a great idea as, unlike ordinary plastics, it biodegrades over time. But when it started breaking down prematurely, years before we were able to use it, we couldn’t recycle it. We had to send it to landfill.

That says everything about how little information we – as business owners and citizens – have about the way in which we use and consume plastic in this country. That’s how messed up the recycling landscape is.

The Government needs to do something, and fast, to unravel this muddle. It’s no use relying on market forces alone: the idea that the well-informed consumer will always make environmentally sensible choices and thereby pressurise companies to do the right thing is nonsense. As it stands, consumers do not have the information they require, and they never will have unless it is given out independently and impartially – not just by trade groups, and the self-interested. We can’t leave it to business, either. There are a lot of people working in business who want to do the right thing, but too often, when the finance director comes to approve it, it’s just all about money.

Clearly, we need to get tough on some of the materials that are causing problems – specifically plastics such as the oxo-degradable types that break down into tiny particles and quite literally clog the environment. They should have been banned years ago. At Riverford organic farm, we have recently taken the decision to move to entirely compostable plastics made from forestry by-products, which is about as good as you can get. It will more or less double our packaging costs, but it breaks down to carbon dioxide and water in 12 weeks in a domestic compost heap.

Then we need to regulate kerbside recycling collections and come up with a unified system. At the moment, there are too many different policies countrywide. Of all the “recyclable” plastic used in the UK, only a third is actually recycled, which is ridiculous. Yes, there are contracts in place which will have to be honoured, but when those finish, be it in three years or five, we need an intelligent, long-term, national policy on what materials will be recycled, composted, incinerated or landfilled. This will also allow manufacturers and producers to carry out a full life-cycle analysis of packaging and what is going to happen to it at the end of its life.

But, important as they are, plastics and recycling are in reality a bit of a distraction from the real issue, which is climate change. And this is where we all need to change our mindset. We simply consume too much, throw too much away and, even when we try to recycle, we expect the environment – above us, around us and below us – to absorb our waste.

It’s not just plastics, either (reducing plastic use does nothing to address climate change; in some instances, it can make it worse). It’s also the stuff we can’t see: what comes out of our exhaust pipes and our chimneys (carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide), everything that we know exacerbates climate change.

This is where both individuals and the Government can make a change. Each person can try to reduce the amount they throw away. But the Government also needs to think about pragmatic policies that balance all environmental impacts. In Sweden, for example, they incinerate their waste, rather than allowing it to go to landfill – a big decision that seems far from the vote-grabbing short-termism our politicians can come up with.

But they could begin, at least, by trying to get some basic, impartial, accessible information out there. That way we can all become better informed and make sensible decisions for ourselves – rather than wasting money, as I did, on something that seems environmentally friendly on the surface but in reality is anything but. The public want change – we just don’t know where to start.