Anyone else have a bag stash like this accumulated since March?
If you do your food shopping online.. it’s almost an inevitability.
With supermarkets forced to temporarily pause their bag recycling scheme earlier this year - surrendering that priceless badge of environmental do-goodism - THIS is the result!
When lockdown first began, there was much talk about “nature healing”.
Taking a step back, however, one thing has begun to be painfully apparent: Plastic waste is back with a vengeance!!
According to a survey commissioned in May by environmental organisation City to Sea, 36 per cent of Britains have felt pushed into using more plastic - bags included - due to the pandemic.
From food and drinks, to hygiene products, single-use plastic seems as ubiquitous now as it ever was... and that’s not the only problem!
Alongside this, reusable cups were banned from coffee shops, although some chains including Costa are now running a ‘contactless coffee" initiative, to safely accept reusable coffee cups again.
The big-picture implications aren’t yet clear, but there are some environmental consequences that are already becoming apparent from these temporary rollbacks to plastic bans.
Industry experts put this widespread reinstatement of single-use plastic bags down to an ‘abundance of caution”, but the main risk environmentalists are concerned about, is that it could ultimately increase ocean plastic pollution going forward.
This Recycle Week, it pays therefore to look at what we can do, in the event of having a stockpile like this cluttering up our kitchen cupboards.
Collections might be on hold, but one solution is that Recycle Now are still running bag recycling facilities.
They have a handy Recycling Locator tool on their website, so why not take a look and see if there’s one local to you!?