If you try to look back, could you pinpoint the moment when your awareness of our plastic consumption became part of your daily routines?
What would you say? The arrival of recycling wheelie bins? The carrier bag tax? Blue Planet?
Is it less important to us than it was as a result of the Covid Pandemic?
As far back as 2011, Wales introduced their 5p single-use “carrier bag tax”. In 2013 and 2014, Northern Ireland and Scotland followed respectively.
In fact, it wasn’t until 5 October 2015 that the same 5p charge came into effect on single use carrier bags!
For many this was just an excuse to implement another “stealth tax”. You probably didn’t know that it raised £58m for good causes in the year to 6 April 2018.
In 2017, the BBC produced a second series of the acclaimed Blue Planet (2001), both presented by Sir David Attenborough. It was the fourth episode of that sequel series, featuring a scene in which a turtle was caught in a plastic bag, before being freed by a cameraman, that has been credited with changing the way in which the Western World viewed it’s use of plastics and specifically single-use plastics.
This huge swell in public awareness of plastic pollution both domestically and internationally, has been referred to as the ‘Blue Planet effect‘.
In the UK, the BBC announced its intention to completely ban single-use plastics within its organisation by 2020.
Since then every industry has followed, every company, every school, every council and to a large extent everyone is conscious of their plastic consumption.
Reducing single-use plastic in our machines has been something that we have strived to improve upon, not just for our clients, but for our own corporate and social responsibility. For most facilities, office or HR managers, reducing plastic has been a huge part of their company’s CSR policy.
In 2017, one client in particular tasked us with reducing or removing as much single-use plastic as possible. With 9 snacks and drinks vending machines located across 3 company sites, we took upon the task with endeavour.
Wherever possible, we swapped a bottle for a can and in the second half of 2017, we were able to cut their single-use plastic consumption by over 50%.
Covid & Plastic
Much has been made of the impact that Covid has had on the environment – in particular the drop in pollution levels during lockdown – but we cannot escape the fact that plastic consumption has sky-rocketed throughout 2020. And the painful part is that it is not good plastics!
The latest figures for Britain from the Office for National Statistics suggested 96% of adults who had left their homes in the past week had worn a face covering.
The official guidance for England is to wear a reusable, washable one where possible.
It also states that used disposable face coverings – often containing the plastic polypropylene – should be put in “black bag” waste bins “or a litter bin if you’re outside”.
It adds that people should “not put them in a recycling bin as they cannot be recycled through conventional recycling facilities” and “take them home… if there is no litter bin – do not drop them as litter”. 1
Sanitiser bottles, disposable face masks and gloves fill our bins and litter our streets. At Touch AR, our endeavours have shifted towards re-usable sanitiser sprays for our Operations Teams as we have pursued more regular disinfection of our machines. We also made a commitment to only retail re-usable, washable face coverings in our vending machines.
To help prevent the spread of Covid, across the UK, face coverings aer now mandatory and as the PM says, there has been a “collosal spike in demand” for tests. Therefore we find ourselves in a position where almost everything relating to Covid-Security contains or is packaged with single-use plastics and we are ploughing through these items in unbelievable quantities. The UK is testing approximately 2.5 million people per week… that’s a lot of single-use plastic.
Some of the waste from just 3 Coronavirus self-test kits – imagine that times by 2.5 million.
“In the United Kingdom, so-called fly-tipping – illegal waste disposal – has risen by 300% during the pandemic. In some countries, companies that are advancing innovative methods of recycling and reusing waste plastics are reporting reduced amounts of plastic coming through waste streams, suggesting that a growing volume of plastic is ending up in landfills or leaking into the environment.”
Every Little Helps
We know that we must continue to focus on the small goals and commit to the mantra that every little helps.
Just a few trips into serviced offices or managed blocks in the past weeks I witnessed disposable face masks made available in large bowls – almost like you would expect to find peppermints or sweets.
As we continue the big return to work… the key question for facilities managers and block management departments is whether this could be replaced with something more sustainable.
We keep hearing the mantra that “this isn’t going away” – if it really isn’t going away, if this IS the new normal, shouldn’t the free – distribution of multiple plastic masks to each office worker or visitor be swapped for a single purchase of a plastic-free, re-usable and washable face covering? Would most City commuters and workers, prefer a more fashionable item as something to purchase as a one-off?
Contact us to ask how we can help to reduce your plastic consumption and create a more sustainable solution for your Covid-secure work environment.
