[TV] Drowning In Plastic: BBC1 8.30-10pm This Evening

[dazzer6666]

Brilliant, and at the same time quite horrifying piece of TV. The scenes with the Shearwater chicks being induced to vomit up bits of plastic was particularly shocking, along with the Indonesian river. Agree with others, it does at least feel like there is a rapidly increasing realisation that something drastic needs to be done, but the task now is so, so massive. If we can at least stem the bleeding that would be a start, but even that will take years to get some countries on side.

 

[beorhthelm]

Secondly, pills. We used to buy our aspirins - and get any pills prescribed for us - in little bottles with a label saying take two, twice a day or whatever. Now they come in little boxes, with each pill individually packaged in foil and plastic - what a nonsense! It might be hard for governments to stop charities pushing plastic bags through my letter box, but they could change whatever legislation it is that says it's unsafe to give us our pills in little bottles (which I presume is the reason for the current practice of individually wrapped pills..

no legislation, its guidance to discourage overdose, its less spontaneous to extract a dozen pills from blister packs than pour out from a bottle.

 

[GT49er]

no legislation, its guidance to discourage overdose, its less spontaneous to extract a dozen pills from blister packs than pour out from a bottle.

Sledgehammer to crack a nut - millions of us bought bottles of 100 aspirins and survived. It is very sad when anyone commits suicide, but perhaps now saving the planet from being swamped by plastic is now the greater priority.

 

[Fignon's Ponytail]

As someone who has been a packaging engineer / designer for 20 years, it horrifies me to see what is being packaged in plastics in the stores these days, when there is absolutely no need for it.
Thankfully I only ever work with FSC approved carton-board from sustainable sources (which then hopefully gets recycled by the customer) but seeing all this plastic pollution from "my" industry is both heartbreaking & infuriating... (

 

[clapham_gull]

hmmm. agree with what your suggesting in principle, using regulation or legislation. outright banning a particular coloured product seems heavy handed when there could be ways to modify the plastic so it could b detected.

i find this "black cant be seen" a bit dubious though. first of all because different councils apparently give different advice on recyclable or not. secondly seems to me unlikly that optical light is relied on to sort plastic that wouldnt tell different types of plastic apart. so there's something more technical here. black plastic is limited use recycled for anything other than black plastic, though as we seem to use a lot this shouldnt really be a problem (and also reason not to ban black plastic - what would you do with all the lower grade recycled stuff?). i wonder if the problem may be black plactic tends to be already recycled and lower grade? just sounds like something with a more technical reason than colour, either way a technical solution can be found.

There already is a technical solution. Don't make it in black. A lot of products are simply made that colour either through convention or simply for the way they look.

 

[Brovion]

Peeled Potatoes in plastic packaging are called crisps. Sold in their billions. Apparently.

Um .... crisps aren't just peeled potatoes. An element of cooking also takes place to make them, er, 'crisp'.

Or have I been whooshed?

 

[Stat Brother]

As good a place as any:-

[tweet]1050412058351669248[/tweet]

 

[beorhthelm]

There already is a technical solution. Don't make it in black. A lot of products are simply made that colour either through convention or simply for the way they look.

its not a technical solution if "black" isn't really the problem. example, i recall reading that much recycling doesn't get processed because its dirty, covered in food that needs cleaning off. most food containers are black, it seems a small embellishment of facts can take us from "dirty food containers cant be recycled" to "black food containers cant be recycled".

 

[mothy]

I went to the ocean film festival last night (as I did last year). A collection of thought provoking, emotional & cinematicly beautiful short films.

I'd recommend it to anyone next year

 

[banjo]

Sainsbury’s to ban plastic bags, and use paper bags for fruit n veg and pastries.