News Brief & Commentary by Kip Hansen — 21 January 2022
This coming October, the UK intends to “ban several single-use plastic items, including cutlery and plates”.
“The European Union approved a ban on single-use plastic items in 2018, which went into effect three years later.[2021] England’s neighbors, Scotland and Wales, each banned a similar list of items last year.”
“Rebecca Pow, an environment minister, said in a statement, “Plastic is a scourge which blights our streets and beautiful countryside, and I am determined that we shift away from a single-use culture.””
“Steve Hynd, policy manager at City to Sea, an environmental organization based in Bristol, said the ban was welcomed but “these are very much minimum agreed standards.”
“The ban will help England catch up with other countries that already implemented similar bans years ago,” he said. “But for England to be true ‘global leaders’ in tackling plastic pollution like this government claims to be, we need them to go much further.””
I am a curious person (yes, both meanings). When a Brit orders a take-out curry which she intends to eat on a park bench or sitting on a wall overlooking the pebble beach, what is she going to use to eat her curry when the shop no longer gives her a nice plastic spoon or fork?
Since the E.U. has had a similar ban for more than a year, I queried a European colleague and asked the same question. Being the same sort of person as I, he didn’t know. But he has a daughter and he called her for the real scoop on the streets of Europe, who reports: “They use paper (for the fries), cardboard (for serving a burger), wooden spoons, forks, knives for eating a salad.” I can assume that they use the same wooden cutlery for our take-out curry.
Taken in historical context, Europeans (and other humans) have had spoons carved out of wood, ivory, flint, bone and horn. Later spoons were cast in pewter and other softer metals. But all of those (except the wood—even peasants could have a wooden spoon) were quite valuable and in various time periods, represented wealth and social position. Today, most household spoons are stainless steel. But these are not cheap enough to be given away.
New York’s famous food service automat, Horn and Hardart, offered customers metal cutlery which was meant to be returned at the end of the meal. My wife has one of those spoons, nicked by her mother sometime in the mists of history.
When I was child, the Ice Cream Man gave us simple wooden paddles as spoons for eating our little cups of ice cream. Enter the plastic spoon (and fork, and knife), costing less-than pennies apiece and readily given away with take-out food.
The problem appears to be that many of these cheap now-plastic items end up in the environment – not because they are plastic, but because people are not careful with their trash. The fact that they are plastic just means they will breakdown more slowly in the wild.
The declaration that “…plastic is a scourge” is nothing but an activist meme – something said to get positive attention but is not actually true. It is not “plastic” that is the problem – it is trash and litter, some of which is plastic, purposefully thrown into the environment or carelessly allowed to escape – such as blowing out of the back of a pick-up truck (very common in the United States) or off the back of garbage trucks.
Finally, to my point, which is a question (or an impromptu survey, maybe):
To our readers in the UK and Europe:
How’s that plastic cutlery ban working out for you?
What does the curry-take-out (insert your country’s most common take-out food) give you with which to eat your curry?
What kind of container does the curry come in?
What about the salad – container and cutlery?
And your McDs burger – wrapper and container?
And of course,
What’s your opinion about all this?
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Author’s Comment:
I have written about plastic pollution many times. I have viewed hundreds of photos of “beach trash” and collected and surveyed beach trash myself (in Florida, USA). I have reviewed images and reports of “pelagic trash” (trash found floating in oceans). I have not once in any of those photos or reports (or in personal experience) found plastic spoons. (I once found a single plastic knife left by a sunbather on Cape Canaveral Beach.)
Plastic cutlery is not a scourge – anywhere – as far as I can find…certainly not in the advanced nations of Europe and the UK. Nor is it in the United States.
The anti-plastic advocacy is really a sub-set of the anti-fossil fuels and anti-petroleum movement, which at its heart, it anti-human and anti-civilization.
Now we find that the “greens” have moved us into the past once again—back to wooden spoons — or sporks, if you prefer.
Thanks for reading.
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Honey, As a proper Brit, I don’t eat takeaway food. Except chish and fips.
I haven’t been in a McDs for at least 15 years, and the Burger king burgers come without cutlery.
It’s all vanity virtue signalling anyway.
I stick to KFC – just use your fingers, lick em, good (their gravy is a challenge though).
BUT, I am also asthmatic. When I collect a new Ventolin or Seretide Inhaler every month, both come with a brand new plastic outer case. I just need the middle bit (the little dispensing canister). I can easily re-use the outer bit.
There are 5.4 million people in the UK with asthma. That’s a lot of wasted plastic.
Makes me miss Wimpy and Little Chef. More innocent times, when you could eat your cheap (relatively speaking) motorway grub in peace, without being pestered by a long train of government officials at every bite.
Salute!
I knew I had a link to the elimination of such things as plastic bags in everyday life. Found it and the link follows. The writer was apparently a PR gal for the Russian hosting of the winter games a few years back. Very good site and she has several glimpses into life in the USSR era,and of course you remember you remember the Beatles…. “I’m back in the U.S.S.R. You don’t know how lucky you are, boy Back in the U.S.S.R”
Packaging In The USSR Or Why We Keep Plastic Bags
Gums sends….
First they coupled cancer with privatised “health care” to make sure we die poor.
The few who still managed to leave an inheritance, were then subject to inheritance taxes.
…and here goes our last legacy; legislated into sin just like that.
cilo ==> +10 cultural reference, transmogrified.
“The north side of my town faced east, and the east was facing south”
Here in NE Australia plastics do not last long if exposed to sunlight, but of course, the demand from some junior person resulted in the banning of small plastic cutlery including straws, and the ban also covered plates and cups. The spoons, sporks, knives and forks are all wood, fashioned in China of course. Spoons & sporks flatten out in a couple of seconds if you stir something even moderately hot. “Single use” plastic bags are banned, but were rarely single use as we are supposed to bag rubbish being put into wheely bins. Anyone caring for someone with incontinence will have a problem these days.
Nowadays the plastic bags you get from the supermarket (15c each) are unsuitable to use as a bin liner. You have to buy a roll of plastic bags to use as bin liners. It isn’t about saving the environment, it’s about pushing us another 50 years back in time.
hivemind ==> Our household uses single use shopping bags for small single-room trash basket liners inside the house. My wife collects these little bundles of joy and puts then in the wheelie bin. Works for us.
These thin bags are a scourge if they are allowed to get loose — the wind blows them every where. They too breakdown, but until they do, they are an eyesore.
Our gov. took another angle: All shopping bags have to conform to a minimum thickness, ensuring a) they are expensive and b) they are truly reusable.
It got rid of millions of plastic shreds caught in wire fencing all down every highway. A massive pollution problem solved almost overnight, at a price everyone can afford. The richer folk actually save them for the less fortunate, Africa is like that.
Large dog, frequent walks, thin plastic grocery bags reused, but only once. Nuf said.
Ditto.
cilo ==> Where are you?
Where am I?
How does one whisper menacingly on a keyboard: “I’m in the house!”?
Kip, philosophically, I am drifting slowly towards the horison of sanity on a sea of tears, driven by an ill wind of satanic psychobabble posing as science.
But if you wanna rumble, I can be found somewhere near:
27.41,-26.05
It is about 500m west of the end of the official street map of Gauteng, South Africa.
I include the grid reference for those who doubt my weird tales of living on the congruence of not two, but three climatic zones.
P.S. Rumbling to be limited to the Indian variety, which I believe involves firewater?
The harvest is coming in, so we can also battle the Table Mountain way…
Confluence?
cilo ==> OK, I need a better reference — Goggles Map doesn’t given any reasonable location for either 27.41,-26.05 or Gauteng, South Africa.
Though I like the answer “I’m in the house.” Somewhere in or near Cape Town? An off-shore island? Cruising the coast of South Africa?
Geez, cuz, you still using google?
I know they don’t like me, but Gauteng is an entire province, arguably the greatest concentration of bankster wealth on the continent.
Anyway, 26 South and 27 East, as even Wikidpedo can tell you. Far, far from Cape Town, which we reckon to be populated by somewhat retarded slowcoach yuppies who gather in cliqués near a flat mountain that is apparently the most wonderful heap of stones in the world.
It is said that the mayor of Yaruba once visited the Mayor of Cape Town, and they were discussing the problem of finding good help.
“Manana, they say. Everything is ‘manana’ the lazy bastards! Do you guys also have a word like that?”
The Cape mayor looked at him for a moment, and said: “Oh, we got several, but none of them quite convey the same sense of urgency.”
The brand that seems to be most popular (made in China) are some dry material that could easily double as a moister absorber in pill bottles.
When I am forced to use one I need to ‘prepare’ it by jamming it deep into my food for a good 30 seconds or so, otherwise it sticks to the inside of my mouth.
NOT a fan.
May Contain ==> Paper-ish straws?
martin ==> Thank you for the Oz report. Most plastics break down rather quickly in strong sunlight. At sea, cruising, if you bought the cheap homeowner plastic petrol jerrycans, they broke down in a year or two. Careful purchase (Sceptre brand) fade their color but last many many years.
Cheap plastic give-away cutlery does not show up on the trash collected at sea at all — breaks into bits very quickly and eventually gets eaten by microbes.
Depending on the quality of the polystyrene used for the plastic cutlery, it could be slightly denser than sea water so it sinks to the bottom.
Loren ==> Yes, quite right. It specifically depends on the exact type and manufacturing process. Solid polystrene is just over a specific gravity of one, and should sink (say if you had a solid cube). Any slight air bubble in the product and it barely floats.
PET plastics should sink as well, in fresh water, at least. However, PET water bottles and soda bottles all float until they are entirely full of water — these make the vast majority of plastic trash washed up at river mouths and beaches.
As I have written before, any object that sinks to the bottom of the sea becomes either a home for some sea creature or plant or food (for microbes).
Plastics that are very very resistant to degradation might as well be considered rocks.
“As I have written before, any object that sinks to the bottom of the sea becomes either a home for some sea creature or plant or food (for microbes).
Plastics that are very very resistant to degradation might as well be considered rocks.”
Indeed.
The place you look for wildlife on a featureless beach, is under a rock.
Plastic containers, though unsightly to (Western) human eyes are superb microenvironments that smaller sea creatures flock to. They are almost certainly a net-positive. And if an occasional seagull manages to wedge its head into one particular bottle, so what? It was probably trying to eat something that lived inside.
Yet environmentalists are still having trouble recognising that all those Jacques Cousteau/David Attenborough wildlife documentaries from beneath the waves have one thing in common:
All those sunken wrecks are teeming with fish and other exotic sea creatures that have made it their home and very much like it. Much of the open sea floor is a wide open desert to most sea creatures.
And don’t get me started on hermit crabs. What a bunch of slackers. A disgrace to crustaceans and all decapods everywhere.
michael ==> Most people have never experienced a undersea desert – but they are very very real. Miles of nothing but sand, very occasionally a brave bit of sea plant/algae. But place a basketball sized rock anywhere and BOOM — instant reef!
It has often given me comfort to know that is my sailing catamaran were to sink, it would become a new reef.
Do greenies ever get anything right, with out unintended undesirable consequences? My groceries came this week for the first time in all paper bags 5 of them. They were heavy, so out of interest I weighed them, 60 grams each, 300 grams.
These replace the old “single use” bags we used for everything including bin liners, at just under 10 grans each, 50 grams. In the interim these were replaced by so called reusable plastic bags, dreadful things, much heavier, 25G each & a lousy shape, so no use for bin liners etc.
The paper bags proudly proclaim they are 60% recycled material. So if you actually believe them that means over 100 grams of new wood chip to deliver my groceries. So we have replaced 50 grams of quickly degradable plastic with 300 grams of paper, 40% of it virgin paper, utterly useless for the jobs we used the old disposable.useful bags, & totally useless for any purpose if wet.
Has any greeny ever got anything right?
Has any greeny ever got anything right?
Well, let’s just look at bags.
First, we were using paper bags. Then we had to use plastic bags to save the trees. And then we had to go back to paper to save the environment. And then we had to use reusable bags to save everything. And finally we went back to plastic (but not paper for some reason) because multi-use bags were unsanitary and could spread covid.
And remember CFLs?
Hasbeen ==> Well, efforts to preserve forests and wild lands are good and valuable — but must be done with common sense and not fanatical rigidity.
Real-world sensible air pollution efforts have made the air (even in California’s Los Angeles basin) almost breathable. But not the mad mad world of the modern EPA.
Marine preserves have protected over fished areas (see Bahamas).
Hunting limits and some hunting bans (see polar bears) have allowed some species to recover.
I remember my grandmother (I’m in my 85th year now) in the mid 1940s gathering up a newspaper spread over the floor of a whistle stop railway station in a hamlet in Ontario, excited because it was only a few days old.
At home, she also had a large ball of butcher twine, bundles of ‘silver’ paper, wax paper, sundry jars with lids, elastic bands, burlap sacks, flour sacks, etc., all saved for re-use. She was raised on a homestead on the prairies. Enviros didn’t have any new ideas.
The teeming millions in Asia dump all their plastic garbage in the ocean. Yet the West decides it’ll save the world by banning the plastic cutlery and drinking straws that wound up in western landfills. It’s a condescending and patronizing version of “white man’s burden”. But woke is about feelings, not logic.
And the West by removing CO2 from our power, transport and manufacturing infrastructures will save the planet!
And somehow this already meaningless (because CO2 DOESN’T drive the climate) reduction in the West’s “emissions” will be replaced “times two” by moving the industry to China, India, and other so-called “developing” nations.
Elliot ==> The US/UK/EU bans are silly — they just need better trash consciousnesses and some public shaming. They blame the material item,not the real culprit (people).
No country in Asia intentionally dumps plastic garbage in the sea. That is a pernicious racist/nationalist myth.
Poor countries without adequate waste management (thin of the pictures you see of Mumbai slums) do allow a great deal of trash and garbage to collect on the streets, which rains wash into the rivers and thus to the oceans.
Dumping garbage into the sea by third world countries is not a myth, racist or otherwise. I have interesting video footage of Indonesian islands doing exactly that; locals said anything else was too expensive.
Sorry Kip, but dumping into the sea is very common on Indonesian islands, it is standard practise for anyone near a jetty or waterway. And the amount that finds its way downstream from badly managed dumps is an equally huge problem.
(My joking definition of “bin” in Indonesia : “a place to put rubbish near”.)
Hopefully that is changing with education; over the time I was there I witnessed kelongs (seaside restaurants built on jetties) change from clearing tables by throwing everything over the side to actually using proper disposal systems… the surroundings quickly improve.
markx ==> Again, there will always be small local villians in any problem. This is far from “the teeming millions in Asia”.
There is no nation that allows intentional dumping of trash at sea.
That is is done in some of the worst places is both believable and expected.
Chop sticks…
That’s the only eating aid we get – if we go Chinese
So, no impact at all in this house. But they have signalled their virtue
If I can’t count on a plastic spoon being there when I need it (sorta like windpower), what shall I do?
In my left pocket, I have my wallet and comb, in my right pocket I have my pocket knife, and my keys and flip phone when I go out. Where will I ever find room for a spork?
You can use the comb with some paper to make a kazoo type instrument – should you need it
Mike ==> Could you fit this bamboo set in a hip pocket?
strat ==> I have carried a pair of personal chopsticks in my travel bag (which also holds my two computers and other necessary gear) since I was 21 years old. Once on a camping trip, the quartermaster failed to pack cutlery, so I organized chopstick whittling and we ate well.
I’m still of the opinion that chopsticks are the best aid to weight loss that is available.
Maybe that’s why the Chinese invented them.
When you have little or close to zero food, chopsticks make it go lot further/longer than a fork or spoon. Eating more slowly also produces less of an insulin spike.
I know, I know…I shouldn’t be giving the do-gooders more ideas.
My sleepy brain translated the title into “UK to Bend Plastic Spoons”. Which seemed to me an intriguing visual to illustrate these kind of environmental laws and bans. And even when incidentally metal spoons are bending, suspect the hypnotist and slight of hand manoeuvres.
Uri Geller won’t be pleased!
WE all have these virtue fixated people living among us. In my home town we have all the usual green zealots and the ban plastic everything crew.
I allow the ban plastic dialogue to progress far enough along before I ask a simple question.
‘What will you insulate the electric wires charging up your battery powered car if you ban all plastic’?
There is the usual flustering and attempt to gloss over the lunacy of their ban plastic zealotry but no answer ever comes out.
As for single use cutlery. Well we have all the technology we need to make ‘plastic’ quickly biodegradable if left in the environment. It is the simplest thing in the world to just add a bio degradable requirement into play rather than a ban. That would require a little bit of joined up thinking though, which is something the zealots wanting to ban everything don’t seem able to do.
Rod ==> The tech for bio-degradion of common plastics is cheap and easy. But it doesn’t fill the anti-plastic agenda need — which is not to get rid of unsightly plastic litter by having it break down, but to eliminate the use of fossil fuels.
The Climate Crazies at Columbia explain this clearly.
I think there is a bit of a cultural misunderstanding here.
The Brits don’t eat takeaway curries outside. They take them home. With their climate, they actually eat very little outside. The typical use of plastic cutlery is in cheap restaurants where the cardboard plates and plastic cutlery are discarded after each meal.
The only likely impact may be on fish and chips, which was traditionally eaten from newspaper with the fingers. Plastic forks are occasionally added to a serving nowadays – they are almost useless for eating with and are often discarded before the meal is started…..
I’ve seen quite a few brits eat a curry/burger/kebab etc on the way home from the pub on a night out
Steve ==> Any cutlery involved, or all finger lickin’ good?
I think you will find that eating take-aways on the way home from a night out is not uncommon, at least its not rare.
skinner ==> Same question…finger food?
True, as I’ve had to deal with that logistical problem.
Plastic cutlery in cheap restaurants is provided to eliminate the onerous, expensive and highly regulated use of metal cutlery. Health regulators focus on dish washing and the machines used for it are licensed by authorities. Wash and rinse temperatures must meet standards. Detergents and sanitizers are required. Employees must be hired to operate the dish washing equipment. Single use plates and cutlery are part of the reason that the restaurant can be described as “cheap”.
nailhead ==> The dishwasher regulation part is correct — I’ve worked both ends of that (dishwasher and regulation enforcement). Here (U.S.) we have Chinese, curry, and ethnic food restaurants that are not much more than a take-out counter, with a few tables for those to eat in. All throw away plates and cutlery.
Despite the general belief that things made from wood are “green”, most people don’t realize that a log on the back of a logging truck can be worth several thousand dollars, and took a lot of equipment and labour to remove from the forest (which was also the most economical means), costly stumpage fees, and permits. Just because you can whittle a wooden spoon in an hour from a dead branch doesn’t mean that it is a sound strategy for a million people in a city. In fact, the least consumption of energy, resources, even emissions, equipment and human effort falls in favour of PLASTIC.
DMac ==> Nobody here has ever thought these anti-plastics people as sane or logical. If they could think things through they wouldn’t be proposing these bans in the first place.
So, yes, now we have to cut more trees to make more paper bags, cardboard hamburger containers and wooden spoons, forks, and knives.
The reality is that in “logging”, the felling and cutting of the trees is a minor part of the operation. The most important part of tree harvesting is getting the the logs to where they can be turned into useful products, in other words, road building. In areas like southeast Alaska where the terrain makes it extremely expensive to build roads from the timber to the mills or ports, logs are moved with helicopters because it’s cheaper than building roads.
Yup, you’re catching on as to why PLASTIC is actually environmentally preferable.
Few realize that the manufacture of PAPER is far more of an “environmental” issue than the manufacture of plastics.
Dodgy ==> Well, thank you for the insight. When I was in the UK, making the website for Wimbledon one year, I ate nothing but take-away fish-and-chips.
Don’t you have any nice weather ?
No one in the UK would grumble about our littering if they’d ever walked long a rural road in Spain or southern Italy.
There they grow europe’s vegetables under tons of plastic. A sea of plastic as far as the eye can see.
https://www.visit-andalucia.com/plastic-revolution-almeria/index.php
quelgeek ==> Or any capital city in the less developed world.
I don’t have carry out food very often. Fish and chips in a Styrofoam box eaten with fingers, wood cutlery was available. Pizza in cardboard box eaten with fingers. Curry in aluminium container eaten at home with metal cutlery, containers put recycling after washing. Pizza boxes contaminated with grease and food cannot be recycled where I live, it clogs up the machines appropriately.
There was an item on news last night about decades old land reclaimation now being eroded by the sea and plastic appearing on beaches nearby. Naturally there’s no money available to repair the sea defence.
Your report of a land fill dump being eroded by the sea and thus releasing plastic onto the beach is interesting.
As plastic in volume is a fairly modern thing and as erosion of the shoreline is a constant and known about phenomena. It begs the question what kind of council made the decision to put a dump that close to the sea?
Maybe it is a BBC report, maybe they were hoping to weave in climate change induced sea level rise being the cause of the erosion and thus release of the dump to the beach.
Rod ==> Ya, I would agree. IF IT IS TRUE….then a major engineering/planning failure.
Ben ==> Thanks. I think they are banning the styro box as well. Greasy pizza boxes make good fire-starter if one has a wood stove heater.
Where is the eroding landfill taking place?
Kip
Toxic waste revealed as eroding coastlines expose old landfills | Environment | The Guardian
The Uk Govt has issued guidelines to local authorities on dealing with this. The problems are mainly in those counties with soft and low cliffs such as Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk.
Tonyb
Tony ==> Thanks for the link.
Tony ==> The image in the Guardian shows that the landfill is only maybe a foot deep (.3 meters) so can’t have been used that long, and is at best, just a mess maker.
Another photo in the Guardian is of a river bank in Bosnia — included purely for propaganda purposes.
Along the South Coast of England. I think the map of areas affected by plastic on beaches was approximately Weymouth to Brighton.
A not very good decision 40 years ago, with poos implementation and lack of maintenance since fits well with rising sea level scares
We don’t even use plastic cutlery in the servants’ hall, although I’ll mention it to the butler just in case.
Mort ==> But you don’t use the ‘best silver’ either, right?
The UK countryside or shoreline is NOT littered with plastic spoons or the other cutlery. What you will find is fly tipping caused by restrictions at recycling centres. For example, you can only visit a recycling centre if you register and book a finite time slot, or be banned if you transgress the rules. In the case of my local dump, you cannot walk in, you must book a time slot, or else. There are also restrictions and fees for disposing of building rubble, which is partly understandable, but it appears punitive. So there has been an increase in fly tipping where individuals will unload vans or lorries of white goods, rubble, beds, household waste, right onto rural lanes or fields or forest openings. The shoreline tends to get rubbish thrown off ships and fishing gear and of course the face masks are turning up anywhere. Great idea, lets ban plastic spoons.
We have a ‘municiple household recycle centre’ 1 mile up the road – but it belongs to the next county just over the border. Their council won’t allow us to use it.
So, we have to drive to our own district council’s ‘household recycle centre’ which is 14 miles north of us. Crazy.
A friend turned up to the one near us and they wouldn’t let him in even though it wasn’t busy. It’s also the same with the local swimming pool. If you don’t book a specific time slot online then no entry, and there are limited numbers per time slots. The company running the pool appear to manage sports centres throughout the UK. This all seems like Schwab’s 4th Industrial Revolution.
There are swimming pools in some cities that operate a single sex session policy on behalf of certain sections of the population. Not sure how that will work with all the new laws about self identification of gender.
Hmm. 50+ different gender oriented swimming sessions.
sskinner ==> Ah, bureaucracy defeats purpose. An ever-present problem.
Got me thinking, always dangerous, but…
First, few people do actual take-aways any more – they all get stuff delivered.
haha supposedly ‘for free’ but if anyone has any experiernce of such things, quickly realise that the ‘free delivery actually adds (at least) £2 to the price of every item on the menu, whether you visit the shop or slob out at home waiting for it.
and a lot of the time there’s a minimum order charge
Doesn’t leave very much, APART from the very stuff these virtue signalling ‘creatures’ might be eating themselves. At lunch times
Namely stuff from supermarkets, often involved in ‘Meal Deals’ and comprising all sorts of over-priced, as seen on Nik Nak Nok Nok, health giving fart-inducing goodness involving beans, lentils, tuna, Mediterranean mush, sweet chilli sauce and and and – you get the drift. Esp when downwind.
Comes in (strong) aluminium-foil containers with plastic cutlerey glued inside the cardboard covering
Might save a few tuna-fish (and human digestive tracts) from meeting a horrible end (I did NOT just say that – did I) so could be a good thing
People really should eat more with their fingers – they might then get a few of the bacteria that make VItamin B12 into their guts and thus not become Clones of Brandon
(There’s The 6th Extinction – its the bacteria we’re killing)
“Indians/curries”
I have yet to encounter anyone having a curry who isn’t sitting in a restaurant.
Peta ==> Excellent rant!
I didn’t know you could eat Indians…or that some Brits eat themselves…..
Things get more dangerous. Brits “go for a Chinese” or think they could “murder a curry…”
doesn’t add up ==> The beauty of the English language,
Great, lets just get chopping down all those CO2 consuming trees to make forks and knives out of.
It’s what the original plastic grocery bag was invented to stop.
and the biggest laugh yet?
in aus stupormarkets are now BACK to paper bags!!
Im buying as many of the decent hduty plastic bags from Aldi as I can manage theyre ideal for storing small appliances and heaps of other stuff.
Id saved a large volume of dog food bags to go to redcycle to find theyd NOT recycled them but stashed in warehouses
so?
theyre now my very h duty garbage bags
Just take all those wooden utensils to Drax and use them for fuel.
Kindling for the woodburner at home?
Hot and Oz ==> Soo much of the “green” movement involves “back to the past!”
It’ll be fine if you call it finger food.
Who needs a spoon when you have 10 fingers?
tsk tsk the woke will label you ableist any second!
” 10 fingers”
The indigenous spoons
aus already went nuts on this, so now we have truly crap paper plates expensive heavier pressed paper plates n bowls and Bamboo cutlery which tastes foul and isnt smooth on the tongue( sort of works maybe better than plastic knives that wouldnt cut cheese without snapping) and we can for the time being still get takeaway chinese etc in plastic tub type containers
Bamboo leaf compressed plates are actually better than flimsy plastic n paper ones and ARE reuseable.
I was amused and gobsmacked by the ban on kids under 18 being banned from buying plastic cutlery ie might have a knife in the pack…a few yrs ago in Victoria, theyd be unable to harm anyone as they cant cut tomato!
WHats wrong with using wooden forks?
Anyway, “When a Brit orders a take-out curry which she intends to eat on a park bench or sitting on a wall overlooking the pebble beach”
Never happens.
A curry you eat at home. Fish and chips, kebabs, burgers, those you eat with your hands, at the sea side etc.
zzebowa ==> I am short on cultural understanding….
Here’s a BRitish couple going to buy some fish and chips…
And eating it outdoors on a bench…
The couple ordered a £7.95 takeaway haddock supper, wrapped in paper, which they ate on a bench on the pier. They returned for ice creams – William’s in a cup, Kate’s in a cone – before returning to Edinburgh by helicopter
As you do….
doesn’t add up ==> I see what you did there….snuck in the un-royals.
Meghan would go spare rather than go there.
“Plastic is a scourge which blights our streets and beautiful countryside … “
I’m sitting in my USA dining room, looking out on my USA lawn, USA sidewalk and USA street and see no scourge … plastic or otherwise. Perhaps this is a problem specific to the UK.
Rebecca Pow would probably be horrified to know that much of our domestic waste it carried away in plastic bags. Big plastic bags.
I do compost my clippings …
Discarded cigarette butts are far more blighting.
Tom ==> This is totally correct. Millions of them. No real reason for them not to be degradable.
I’m sure the filters are made at least in part from petroleum products. The horror!
Just before I became homeless and planning for a 2,600 mile recumbent pedal tricycle journey to a warmer climate, I purchased a titanium spork. Sporks are an eating utensil with a fork/knife on one end and a spoon on the other.
Now 11 years have passed since that little journey and the titanium spork remains the primary eating utensil, still looking the same as when it was purchased. Oh, I do have a complete Knork flatware set now but it sits on a shelf.
derbrix ==> Yes, hikers and dedicated campers have always carried various kinds of personal cutlery. I keep a set in my run bag (emergency evacuation bag).
Hmm. Its rare to see anyone perched on a park bench in the UK eating the sort of take away that needs a plastic knife and fork. If you get a take away needing cutlery – Indian or Chinese- more than likely you will take it home. Even more likely you will get it delivered.
Things like burgers and kebabs and pizza don’t require cutlery. Fish and chips might be the exception as they are often eaten outside or in the car but don’t really require cutlery. Where cutlery is offered its more than likely going to be wooden.
I used to enjoy the Big Bang theory and was always surprised to see the characters using plastic knives and forks to eat the takeaways they took home, or similar cutlery when they ate in the University canteen. So perhaps its an American Thing?
I do a litter pick sometimes round and about my home and have never ever come across discarded plastic cutlery but plenty of MC D and KFC discarded food and drinks containers.
climatereason ==> “I do a litter pick sometimes round” — my experience too. I do a roadside pick up with my church group, and have done many many beach and trail cleanups. Very very few (a handful in 40 years) items of plastic cutlery.
Many more products packaged with single use plastic on one side and cardboard on the other are sold in shops as compared to the bags used to cart them away.
Why are these packages not banned?
Many fruit and veg items are sold in the sort of packaging you describe. Mind you when you see the characters handing them before deciding whether to purchase, just be grateful there’s a layer of plastic between you and the person who handled it and put it back on the shelf.
ferd ==> Yes, I agree — they are packaged that way for display to encourage buying. It is good to see what one is getting, and shops ans stores are not designed to have one for display and he rest boxed in cardboard. It is wasteful of precious resources
Ferd, then there’s the all-plastic ones. Those are dangerous once opened, since the only way I’ve ever found to open them is to cut them.
We have no trouble using Chinese products
Why not use Chinese wooden chopsticks?
They can be cleaned. They are reusable
Problem solved
World saved
Davos and 600 private jets no longer needed
The Media will need something else to befuddle eyeballs and ear drums
PS. Do not worry, silverware, etc., will be sold on the black market
Chinese are centuries ahead of us 🙂
A bit of local news. A few years ago a company in Georgia (USA) started exporting disposable wooden chopsticks to China.
Irony!
As a regular river angler, I don’t recall seeing a plastic plate or eating implement on the bank or in the river. However, there are vast amounts of agricultural plastic discarded by farmers, our ‘Guardians of the countryside 🙄 ‘.
I live in a very exposed region and kerbside recycling boxes, put out for collection, are regularly blown down the road casting the contents far and wide, many residents don’t both to pick up their rubbish – it was put out for collection so is no longer their problem!
Also, I suspect one of the biggest users of single use plastic is the NHS, it’ll be interesting to see how they would cope with such a ban.
Banning plastic plates and eating tools is gesture politics at it’s finest (or worst), allowing our amazing politicians to polish their halos and stroke their over inflated egos.
Jackdaw ==> “Banning plastic plates and eating tools is gesture politics” — and is driven by the demands of the demented left who are delusional about threats.
I don’t do takeaway, so can’t comment on materials used, but I am old enough to remember we were encouraged to start using plastic and stop using wood, paper, cardboard to appease the woodland gods, and to cut down on food waste from spoilage from insects, stuff going mouldy and damage from physical handling.
Now the woodland gods have fallen out of favour, we must appease Poseidon.
We must also eschew plastic bottles and bring back glass, because discarded plastic bottles are much worse than broken glass ones for children to fall on or to stand on walking along the beach. And being hit over the head with a glass bottle or having one pushed in your face, is much more fun than a plastic one. (We even have a phrase which had more or less gone out of use – ‘being bottled’ the not infrequent end-point of a disagreement at closing time down the pub.)
Progress, it’s called.
Paganism interrupted by 2 000 years of Christianity, then the Pagan Restoration. We worship Mother Earth, the Sun, rain and wind gods, gods of the woods, rivers, seas and animals with Human sacrifice.
Let the good ole days roll.
John ==> The anti-fossil fuels movement, which includes the sub-set of anti-plastics, is primarily anti-human and anti-progess.