DID you take part in the Big Plastic Count earlier this year? A total of 224,381 people did and they counted 4,639,685 pieces of plastic in a single week. This means that people in the UK are throwing away about 1.7-billion pieces of plastic every week — that’s 90-billion pieces a year.
The UK is second only to the US in the amount of plastic waste produced per person.
Much of this comes from supermarket shopping, particularly for fruit and vegetables, but also with plastic containers for all sorts of cleaning products.
Only 17 per cent of it is recycled; the rest is either dumped or burnt. With the world overflowing with plastic pollution and acres of plastic “islands” seen in our big oceans we really have to cut down on our use of such a persistent material.
We can reduce our plastic consumption by getting our fruit and vegetables from a local supplier wrapped in paper and by using refill containers for items such as rice, shampoo and cleaning items and so avoiding the use of new plastic containers.
Happily, we have two very good such services in St Austell. Have you tried Richards (www.parmarket.co.uk/food-hall) at Par Market, open Wednesday to Sunday, nine to five? They have a huge variety of fruit and veg — much of which is local produce (thereby supporting our local farmers and reducing food miles). In addition, they have a large fresh fish (local, of course) counter plus cheeses and dairy – again from local farmers.
To add to all that, they have refill for all sorts of foods — breakfast cereals, pasta, spices, coffee etcetera — and shampoo, conditioner, general cleaning materials and much more.
A similar service of refill is available at London Apprentice (www.the-refill-hut.co.uk) just pop in and see for yourself.
Happily, we also have a very good greengrocer in the town centre who uses paper bags.
So, by using such businesses we support local traders and local farmers, thereby cutting down our food miles and, in addition, by refilling we cut down on plastic waste…surely a win-win for the environment!