new plastic recycling rules?

Andy From Sligo

just been hearing on radio these last couple of days that only hard plastic can go into the recycle bin now and not plastic wrapping/cling film/ cellophane off food packaging

So where does that go now? - dont tell me its back into the landfill bin that plastic goes now?

elperello

Yes you are hearing correct it goes to landfill or incinerator.

Zaph

This isn't a new thing, cling film, cellophane, etc. was never recyclable.

elperello

Zaph wrote: »

This isn't a new thing, cling film, cellophane, etc. was never recyclable.

Correct.
The best you can do is try to re-use some of it before it goes into the bin.

Del.Monte

More feckin nonsense. It shouldn't be allowed to be produced if it can't be recycled. Combine this with the laughable decision by China to ban the importation of waste plastic from the EU...where do they think it originates from in the first place....:rolleyes:

Hitman3000

Del.Monte wrote:

More feckin nonsense. It shouldn't be allowed to be produced if it can't be recycled. Combine this with the laughable decision by China to ban the importation of waste plastic from the EU...where do they think it originates from in the first place....

What was laughable? China was ok with accepting recyclable plastics until idiots decided to contaminate it with non recyclable material.

Del.Monte

Hitman3000 wrote: »

What was laughable? China was ok with accepting recyclable plastics until idiots decided to contaminate it with non recyclable material.

Perhaps if they didn't produce so much plastic rubbish - not just the packaging - then they wouldn't be getting so much back.

Hitman3000

Del.Monte wrote:

Perhaps if they didn't produce so much plastic rubbish - not just the packaging - then they wouldn't be getting so much back.

They don't have to take it back, also we as consumers have a responsibility to purchase sustainable products. The Chinese are serving a demand, I noticed how you ignored the contamination care to share why?

Del.Monte

Hitman3000 wrote: »

They don't have to take it back, also we as consumers have a responsibility to purchase sustainable products. The Chinese are serving a demand, I noticed how you ignored the contamination care to share why?

Of course there shouldn't be contamination, that goes without saying but I as I understand it contamination has little to do with the Chinese decision.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/07/chinese-ban-on-plastic-waste-imports-could-see-uk-pollution-rise

As for the consumer, that's a tall order as most people are too lazy or too busy looking for a bargain not to buy Chinese rubbish from Dealz and the other € shops. At the end of the day Western consumers are spending a fortune on Chinese products which in turn is helping towards the building up their armed forces at a frightening rate.

Hitman3000

Del.Monte wrote:

Of course there shouldn't be contamination, that goes without saying but I as I understand it contamination has little to do with the Chinese decision.

Contaminants is one of the reasons they cited as is there right. Up to consumer's to make the change.

Del.Monte

Hitman3000 wrote: »

Contaminants is one of the reasons they cited as is there right. Up to consumer's to make the change.

I did - years ago.

Andy From Sligo

how is it environmentally friendly to put non recyclable plastic in the landfill bin or incinerate it, I dont get it - plastic takes 120 years to disintegrate doesnt it, thats why i thought you werent allowed to put it in the landfill bin and incinerating it will give off toxic fumes from burning the plastic wouldnt it? - I think its getting very confusing now.

Del2005

Del.Monte wrote: »

Of course there shouldn't be contamination, that goes without saying but I as I understand it contamination has little to do with the Chinese decision.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/07/chinese-ban-on-plastic-waste-imports-could-see-uk-pollution-rise

As for the consumer, that's a tall order as most people are too lazy or too busy looking for a bargain not to buy Chinese rubbish from Dealz and the other € shops. At the end of the day Western consumers are spending a fortune on Chinese products which in turn is helping towards the building up their armed forces at a frightening rate.

I've found that the products in the Euro shops have way less packaging than from premium shops, that's for similar items.

Sure if we weren't buying Chinese we'd just be supporting another country to build up its armed forces.

two wheels good

It's worth checking with your local council whether any of their recycling centres provide a collection point for "soft" plastics.
My local recycling centre, Kinsale Road Cork, provides a skip for plastic wrappers and bags but don't seem to advertise the fact. I have no idea what becomes of it though.
But it's frightening how much accumulates at home - despite trying to avoid or re-use plastic wrappers.

blondeonblonde

Zaph wrote: »

This isn't a new thing, cling film, cellophane, etc. was never recyclable.

I know that cellophane was never recyclable nor was cling film but other so called soft plastic LDPE bags were recyclable. Now it seems only the rigid plastics are going to be accepted due to these changes from China.

In some ways it is probably a good thing that we can no longer export the problem to China. Hopefully it will force the issue to come to the fore.

It is so frustrating to go to the supermarket though and not have any choice to buy plastic free items. Only way people will change behaviour is by legislation to levy packaging.

Andy From Sligo

are we not just shifting the problem of putting the plastic back into the landfill bin now. We have been told for years to put *all plastic packaging* into the recycle bin and now being told to put the soft plastics back into landfill bin now!

Also we havent even got a brown bin from our waste collection providers, been checking their website for must be last 6 months and it says "brown bins being phased in"

Ger Roe

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

are we not just shifting the problem of putting the plastic back into the landfill bin now. We have been told for years to put *all plastic packaging* into the recycle bin and now being told to put the soft plastics back into landfill bin now!

All plastic packaging was never recyclable in this country. People who say they put every bit of plastic package into the green bin are not doing it correctly.

The bigger issue is why we allow non recyclable material to be used here in the first place, or worse, why we allow plastic packaging to be used that is not marked correctly to show the specific plastic type used. Unmarked type specific plastic should also not be placed in the recycle bin because we can not be sure what it is actually made of.

Some high level thinking and action is required - it can't all be left to the consumer, or solved by inventing an additional tax.

dr.fuzzenstein

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

are we not just shifting the problem of putting the plastic back into the landfill bin now. We have been told for years to put *all plastic packaging* into the recycle bin and now being told to put the soft plastics back into landfill bin now!

Also we havent even got a brown bin from our waste collection providers, been checking their website for must be last 6 months and it says "brown bins being phased in"

Problem in Ireland is that councils desperately want to get out of anything to do with rubbish and recycling, so they are closing facilities, levying charges and take fewer and fewer items.
Private operators just want to cherry pick the simplest/cheapest/most profitable solution.
It's completely idiotic, it's just lazy, short-term driven thinking that gives the biggest return for the smallest amount of work or monetary outlay. All done on the principle of SEP, Someone Else's Problem or STB, Screw the Bastard.
Since I am back in Germany I go to the local council recycling facility where I can recycle paper, cardboard, glass, tin and alu cans, wood, electronics, metal, window (and other) glass, large quantities of bubblewrap, styrofoam, plastic wrappings of any kind AND I get a green plastic bag where I can put any kind of packaging materials used by supermarkets for food and juice and milk cartons.
And that is for free I might add.
At home I have the usual brown ad black bin. If it was just me, I wouldn't need the black bin at all.

Andy From Sligo

our bin providers actually made a rule that *all plastics must be clean and placed into the recycle bin* and then made an addition of any plastic found in landfill bin the the landfill bin would not be emptied!

I mean, not all of us can realise the ins and out out of recycling. I am aware about that it takes what something like 120 years or something for plastic to degrade but thats about as much as my knowledge goes on that score.

I had thought maybe , i dunno, that we put the plastics in the recyclin bin and our waste company took it and (well passed onto someone else) melted down and turned back into plastic bottles again and plastic packaging, thats why I thought the reason why they asked you to rinse/clean the plasic before you put it into the recycling bin.

Del.Monte

It's a ****ing shambles like everything to do with the environment in this country. The EPA, the Green Party, the Government....one big mess.

Andy From Sligo

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Problem in Ireland is that councils desperately want to get out of anything to do with rubbish and recycling, so they are closing facilities, levying charges and take fewer and fewer items.
Private operators just want to cherry pick the simplest/cheapest/most profitable solution.
It's completely idiotic, it's just lazy, short-term driven thinking that gives the biggest return for the smallest amount of work or monetary outlay. All done on the principle of SEP, Someone Else's Problem or STB, Screw the Bastard.
Since I am back in Germany I go to the local council recycling facility where I can recycle paper, cardboard, glass, tin and alu cans, wood, electronics, metal, window (and other) glass, large quantities of bubblewrap, styrofoam, plastic wrappings of any kind AND I get a green plastic bag where I can put any kind of packaging materials used by supermarkets for food and juice and milk cartons.
And that is for free I might add.
At home I have the usual brown ad black bin. If it was just me, I wouldn't need the black bin at all.

so the easiest solution would be to look at what Germany is doing, and if its working for them and is effective (more effective than we do at present) then just implement it into the way re recycle in Ireland - but i suppose make it harder/expensive/confusing for the Irish consumer to get rid of their rubbish is the only way they know how to go and as long as people pay up then thats OK . its laziness for sure

Oldtree

Is it any wonder that the recycling ethos is failing here, with people putting things like dirty nappies into the recycling bins. It's the same mindset that has our roads littered with takeaway bags and cigarette butts, and our water polluted.

The new recycling list is below and they have felt they have had to go as far as putting the list in picture format.........

https://recyclinglistireland.ie/

The most poignant point on that website is that we have to have the highest quality clean recycling in order to sell it on to the global market!

blondeonblonde

Ger Roe wrote: »

All plastic packaging was never recyclable in this country. People who say they put every bit of plastic package into the green bin are not doing it correctly.

The bigger issue is why we allow non recyclable material to be used here in the first place, or worse, why we allow plastic packaging to be used that is not marked correctly to show the specific plastic type used. Unmarked type specific plastic should also not be placed in the recycle bin because we can not be sure what it is actually made of.

Some high level thinking and action is required - it can't all be left to the consumer, or solved by inventing an additional tax.

Government need to act though & it will have to be at an EU level in order for it to happen as the Irish government don't have the will or bottle to do it. The recent rejection of a deposit / refund system by the government for plastic bottles just underlines this.

Apparently the increase in shale gas fracking in the US has hugely impacted the production of plastics. Expected to grow by 40% in the next decade. Huge money & oil companies are heavily invested in producing more plastics & packaging.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/26/180bn-investment-in-plastic-factories-feeds-global-packaging-binge

Consumers still need to vote with their feet though & make more efforts to avoid buying products with excessive packaging. Awareness is key.

New Home

One of the things I don't get is why tetrapack is allowed and cardboard coffee cups aren't - they both have a plastic lining. :rolleyes:

TallGlass

Zaph wrote: »

This isn't a new thing, cling film, cellophane, etc. was never recyclable.

That's a bit off, depending on which way you look at the question. It is recyclable if the facility can process it. The main reason, cling film/light plastic is rejected/not wanted is due to it getting stuck in the automated machines that filter/sort out the material.

That's not to say you can't recycle it! It just take more effort.

GhostyMcGhost

Oldtree wrote: »

Is it any wonder that the recycling ethos is failing here, with people putting things like dirty nappies into the recycling bins. It's the same mindset that has our roads littered with takeaway bags and cigarette butts, and our water polluted.

The new recycling list is below and they have felt they have had to go as far as putting the list in picture format.........

https://recyclinglistireland.ie/

The most poignant point on that website is that we have to have the highest quality clean recycling in order to sell it on to the global market!

its stupidly confusing now
Egg Cartons can go in our brown bin

Andy From Sligo

Oldtree wrote: »

Is it any wonder that the recycling ethos is failing here, with people putting things like dirty nappies into the recycling bins. It's the same mindset that has our roads littered with takeaway bags and cigarette butts, and our water polluted.

The new recycling list is below and they have felt they have had to go as far as putting the list in picture format.........

https://recyclinglistireland.ie/

The most poignant point on that website is that we have to have the highest quality clean recycling in order to sell it on to the global market!

thanks for supplying the link, I shall have a look at that later

Andy From Sligo

blondeonblonde wrote: »

Government need to act though & it will have to be at an EU level in order for it to happen as the Irish government don't have the will or bottle to do it. The recent rejection of a deposit / refund system by the government for plastic bottles just underlines this.

Apparently the increase in shale gas fracking in the US has hugely impacted the production of plastics. Expected to grow by 40% in the next decade. Huge money & oil companies are heavily invested in producing more plastics & packaging.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/26/180bn-investment-in-plastic-factories-feeds-global-packaging-binge

Consumers still need to vote with their feet though & make more efforts to avoid buying products with excessive packaging. Awareness is key.

just as a thought - if consumers vote with their feet and avoid buying products with excessive packaging then end of the chain (it being the shop) will suffer more than the plastics industry (where you want it to hit)

I think it far better to do what a lot of people are doing these days, pay for their items at the till ... then unwrap all the plastic cellophane, hard plastic trays, polystyrene foam and any other plastic packaging ... and leave it at the shop. I am going to ask the mrs to do that next time she goes shopping and I will too - I think by law shops cannot refuse taking back packaging on food and other products including electrical/electronics .. is that right?

Oldtree

What I don't understand is that the plastic window on envelopes is allowed on the new list for recycling. Not sure it was ever off the recycling list.

Surely that will contaminate the paper recycling to a large degree and be difficult to seperate. Ok I know I'm a zealot, but I've been tearing these windows off envelopes for decades.

Is there a reason for this does anyone know, or have I been wasting my time?

Oldtree

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

just as a thought - if consumers vote with their feet and avoid buying products with excessive packaging then end of the chain (it being the shop) will suffer more than the plastics industry (where you want it to hit)

I think it far better to do what a lot of people are doing these days, pay for their items at the till ... then unwrap all the plastic cellophane, hard plastic trays, polystyrene foam and any other plastic packaging ... and leave it at the shop. I am going to ask the mrs to do that next time she goes shopping and I will too - I think by law shops cannot refuse taking back packaging on food and other products including electrical/electronics .. is that right?

If there was a charge like the plastic bag for that type of plastic, it woun't be too long before all those types of plastic would be left with the shops. It would probably be a lot cleaner too.

New Home

Oldtree wrote: »

What I don't understand is that the plastic window on envelopes is allowed on the new list for recycling. Not sure it was ever off the recycling list.

Surely that will contaminate the paper recycling to a large degree and be difficult to seperate. Ok I know I'm a zealot, but I've been tearing these windows off envelopes for decades.

Is there a reason for this does anyone know, or have I been wasting my time?

I'm pretty sure the plastic wasn't plastic but cellophane, and therefore not recyclable. And if it's any consolation, I'm a zealot too, I used a guillotine when I had lots of envelopes to sort out.

I really do think that if they just invested some money in better machinery, even though it would probably be a big financial commitment to start off with, it would be much better in the long run because more items could be processed and therefore reducing waste, and it would definitely create more jobs. Also, why do they ship everything to China and they don't contact other European countries who manage to recycle more efficiently?

Oldtree

I think because it's more cost effective to ship it all to China and China was willing to pay more.

Another point is that it's probably cheaper to import and convert waste to energy in China with their incinerators being 20 times cheaper due to scale, than a standard fuel.

China has been collecting resources for many years from all over the planet, buying land in Africa to grow food for themselves, buying mines and stockpiling steel and Australia copper, the list goes on with these clever industrious people. They don't miss a trick.

Our recyclables (even dirty) were a resource to them, a pity it was just waste to us.

Skedaddle

This is going to cause a huge upswing in the amount of plastic packaging going into landfill in Ireland as it’s not going to be segregated. Effectively you’re putting all the soft plastics, which to date, had been seprearated by a lot of house holds, straight back into the general waste stream.

You’re also undoing the education about separating waste. I know in our household when the new rules were introduced, all of a sudden our garbage bin is now full of soft plastics.

I’ve seen a few people respond with “it’s too confusing” and just put all sorts of random stuff into the general waste bin that should be segregated.

I’ve tried, and tried and tried, but there’s no way of avoiding the damn stuff. It’s really difficult to find fruit in even up-scale supermarkets like SuperValu that isn’t in trays and the sheer volume of foods that have soft plastic packs or display window cardboard packs and all sorts of weird mixed plastics is absolutely ridiculous when you start to look at it in detail. Even when you think you’re using paper, it’s often plastic coated or plastic weaves into everything from tea bags, to paper food wraps to woven into kitchen paper to make it ‘strong’.

We need to be absolutely coming down like a ton of bricks on the manufacturers of consumer products and food producers. What’s happening is an absolute disgrace when you look at it.

There are alternatives too. We didn’t use anything like this volume of plastic, even in the 1980s.

All of the burden is being put on consumers and in a lot of cases, we don’t actually have choices. Or, have extremely limited ones and we are being corralled into using these products by the manufacturers, distributors and retailers who don’t give a damn about the environment in reality.

Skedaddle

Skedaddle wrote: »

This is going to cause a huge upswing in the amount of plastic packaging going into landfill in Ireland as it’s not going to be segregated. Effectively you’re putting all the soft plastics, which to date, had been seprearated by a lot of house holds, straight back into the general waste stream.

You’re also undoing the education about separating waste. I know in our household when the new rules were introduced, all of a sudden our garbage bin is now full of soft plastics.

I’ve seen a few people respond with “it’s too confusing” and just put all sorts of random stuff into the general waste bin that should be segregated.

I’ve tried, and tried and tried, but there’s no way of avoiding the damn stuff. It’s really difficult to find fruit in even up-scale supermarkets like SuperValu that isn’t in trays and the sheer volume of foods that have soft plastic packs or display window cardboard packs and all sorts of weird mixed plastics is absolutely ridiculous when you start to look at it in detail. Even when you think you’re using paper, it’s often plastic coated or plastic weaves into everything from tea bags, to paper food wraps to woven into kitchen paper to make it ‘strong’.

We need to be absolutely coming down like a ton of bricks on the manufacturers of consumer products and food producers. What’s happening is an absolute disgrace when you look at it.

There are alternatives too. We didn’t use anything like this volume of plastic, even in the 1980s.

All of the burden is being put on consumers and in a lot of cases, we don’t actually have choices. Or, have extremely limited ones and we are being corralled into using these products by the manufacturers, distributors and retailers who don’t give a damn about the environment in reality.

As someone who was not around in the 80s, I'm curious what were the alternatives?

I don't like the volume of plastic we are using either, but at the same time, people like buying processed, packaged food today unfortunately.

New Home

Paper/cardboard, glass (often the empties were to be brought back to the shops for recycling), tin/aluminium, wax paper.

Skedaddle

Things like cornflakes were in wax paper bags inside the box (shredded wheat still is), not plastic. Milk was delivered in glass bottles and they were collected, washed and reused, people used washing powder in cardboard boxes, lots of things like toilet paper were packed in paper.

Takeaway coffee was pretty unusual.

Fruit and veg was all loose and you just picked it into brown paper bags. Plastic came later.

Skedaddle

What gets me annoyed is loads of this stuff can be done without any negative impacts on quality of life. In most cases the plastic is largely benefiting the retailers, manufacturers and distributors, not the consumer. However, all the blame is put on the end users. Change needs to start from the top.

Andy From Sligo

Skedaddle wrote: »

Things like cornflakes were in wax paper bags inside the box (shredded wheat still is), not plastic. Milk was delivered in glass bottles and they were collected, washed and reused, people used washing powder in cardboard boxes, lots of things like toilet paper were packed in paper.

Takeaway coffee was pretty unusual.

Fruit and veg was all loose and you just picked it into brown paper bags. Plastic came later.

wouldnt it be great to go back to all that packaging now

Andy From Sligo

Skedaddle wrote: »

What gets me annoyed is loads of this stuff can be done without any negative impacts on quality of life. In most cases the plastic is largely benefiting the retailers, manufacturers and distributors, not the consumer. However, all the blame is put on the end users. Change needs to start from the top.

precisely - most of the time it is packaged up like this for presentation purposes for the manufacturer to help sell their product(s) and nothing else

Spanish Eyes

It would be fare more informative to be informed as to what we CANNOT put in the recycling green bin anymore, with pictures of course.

Negatives are fare more useful than positives in these campaigns I think.

New Home

The initial reason for switching to plastic was that with lighter/thinner packaging the cost of transport would have been a fraction of what was before. All well and good, but the cost of disposing of the packaging wasn't taken into account at all.

Skedaddle

A lot of things simply weren't packed at all. Except for glass (which was reused and is highly recyclable), the packaging isn't lighter and thinner. It's just a lot more plentiful.

In a lot of cases they just added huge amounts of packaging to make things more easily transported and stacked, using fewer people.
It also may increase shelf lifenans obviously it's used to differentiate the products from the completion or for gimmicks.

I mean in most cases plastic has replaced paper and wooden crates.

There's also a possibility of making easily recyclable packaging.

My view of it is that all packaging should be designed to be minimal and 100% recoverable. It isn't going to happen without making major changes to legislation and the EU and other major trade blocs and nations need to drive it. Nobody else will.

Andy From Sligo

to make it easier for the consumer (and lets face it if you want to change the attitude from consumers especially older consumers who used to just chuck anything and everything straight into the landfill bin as they were growing up and before recycling came in) - would it not be less confusing to say, all plastic, tins, bottles, cardboard go into the recycle bin .... and just have someone at the recycling centre separate the stuff as it goes along on the conveyor belt into the recycled pile and whatever else that isnt recyclable into another pile ?

i know some will say well then thats not fair on the recyclers or that it will be too time consuming for them but still the way it is that all the onus is on the consumer to put the right things into the right bin and with a lot of people its confusing

New Home

That would be INCREDIBLY time consuming and inefficient, unless they got some automated way to do it. The way it is you have many people sorting a little rubbish in their homes, the way you mention would have very few people sorting a mountain of waste in a recycling centre.

Andy From Sligo

New Home wrote: »

That would be INCREDIBLY time consuming and inefficient, unless they got some automated way to do it. The way it is you have many people sorting a little rubbish in their homes, the way you mention would have very few people sorting a mountain of waste in a recycling centre.

I watched a programme once on TV (it was one of these school programmes ) and they showed what happens when your recycle bin went to the recycling facility and it had big long conveyor belts with people sitting at it and picking bits off the belt that was recyclable and a big magnet that got recyclable tins out of the pile 9or have I got that the wrong way round? - are recyclable tins like bake been cans and coke tins magnetic or not magnetic?) - but admittedly that was years ago , most probably as you say now has all gone automated/machines doing it now these days.

Skedaddle

You have to at least simplify the numbers of raw materials in use and ensure that they're easily identifiable for recycling.
We are putting the cart before the horse. The solution is at the production side, with cooperation from consumers.

I don't think most consumes really want to be part of a system that creates all this plastic waste. Most of us will do our best to reduce and recycle, if we can.

The EU is moving towards banning non-recyclable plastics but it's such a long phase in period that it's going to be quite a while before we get there.

For anything meaningful to happen on this, it has to be pan-EU at the very least, and in reality should have buy-in and harmonisation maybe across the whole OECD and beyond.

If you could get most of the world on board something like this, the problem would start to resolve. It needs the EU, US, China and quite a few others working in harmony on this one issue.

New Home

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

I watched a programme once on TV (it was one of these school programmes ) and they showed what happens when your recycle bin went to the recycling facility and it had big long conveyor belts with people sitting at it and picking bits off the belt that was recyclable and a big magnet that got recyclable tins out of the pile 9or have I got that the wrong way round? - are recyclable tins like bake been cans and coke tins magnetic or not magnetic?) - but admittedly that was years ago , most probably as you say now has all gone automated/machines doing it now these days.

I remember watching something similar about six months ago, IIRC they were showing how recycling (plastic in particular) was handled in different countries. Some countries still sorted everything by hand, others had machinery so sophisticated that it could identify and filter out different types of material (including different types of plastic) using a special scanner/sensor thingy (yes, that IS a technical term), and a jet of air would then isolate and divide the items as appropriate, including soft plastic. The waste left in the end was a risible proportion of the initial amount collected. I'm not sure how Ireland is handling it (whether partially by hand or entirely by machine, and if the latter how sophisticated the machinery would be).

Oldtree

I had a very hard time of it for a while as I have been eating wheetabix for breakfast since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Some bright spark changed the inside packaging for the wheetabix to a plastic wrapping and I'd swear it changed the taste and texture of the wheetabix in a negative way.

Thankfully there must have been an uprising as they changed it back to a paper wrapping after a while and all has been well since.

Andy From Sligo

Oldtree wrote: »

I had a very hard time of it for a while as I have been eating wheetabix for breakfast since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Some bright spark changed the inside packaging for the wheetabix to a plastic wrapping and I'd swear it changed the taste and texture of the wheetabix in a negative way.

Thankfully there must have been an uprising as they changed it back to a paper wrapping after a while and all has been well since.

certainly would make you think what kind of packaging could have an effect on the taste of the product - isnt there like a scare i read somewhere about bottled water in plastic bottles whereby the plastic chemicals can leech into the water and could give people cancer - or something about if the bottled water is left in the sun the plastic can leech into the water.

there have also been time i am sure where something has been packaged in thin plastic (like cling film) and I have thought "hold on a moment, this tastes of plastic!" or has a plastic type of aftertaste.

The manufacturers really have to start going back to paper if it can be used for things - but then again I suppose the consumer wants to see something before they buy these days before you leave the shop and make sure its in good condition not bruised or mouldy as in the case of fruit if they have packaged it up with something like a cling film on top of the fruit/food.

- I dont know how that can be achieved. maybe its buy fruit in the polystyrene base with clingfilm , then take the food out of the packaging at the shop , put into brown paper bag and then leave all the packaging with the shop, I suppose thats the other way it could be done

Hitman3000

Andy From Sligo wrote:

- I dont know how that can be achieved. maybe its buy fruit in the polystyrene base with clingfilm , then take the food out of the packaging at the shop , put into brown paper bag and then leave all the packaging with the shop, I suppose thats the other way it could be done

You won't be able to do that. You purchase the product in the packaging and by virtue of that the packaging is also yours. Leaving it at the shop is technically dumping.

Oldtree

Hitman3000 wrote: »

You won't be able to do that. You purchase the product in the packaging and by virtue of that the packaging is also yours. Leaving it at the shop is technically dumping.

I think it's more along the lines of the shops accepting back the plastic there and then. Maby shoppers bring their own bags along. Certainly from a recycling point of view the plastic would be much cleaner if collected at this point. Could be that the shops could find some easy of reuseing the trays etc.