This is today’s third blog about the RSPB. First we had a good piece of research, then their cogitations on doing the right thing and now a confusing question about packaging of the magazine, Nature’s Home.
When I came home from seeing Hawfinches yesterday there were two magazines waiting for me, Nature’s Home and Private Eye. Both were wrapped in clear see-through plastic wrappings (at least I’m going to call them plastic but I don’t really know what they are in truth!).
I tore the wrappings open to get to the magazines and walked towards the rubbish bin in the kitchen. But then I stopped and thought I’d check. ‘We can’t recycle these can we?’ I asked my in-house recycling expert and was told ‘No’, so into the bin they went. I should say that there is rather little that isn’t recycled in our house and our recycling bin is usually full (not just with wine bottles, but they do figure quite strongly in the overall contents).
A while later I noticed that Rob Sheldon had also opened his Nature’s Home and had tweeted as follows
Well, Rob had clearly got further in his reading than I had – I was still on Private Eye! But as you can see, his tweet got a lot of retweets and responses. And I was interested in this part of the thread. Leaving aside the fact that Jeff Knott putting something in a recycling bin doesn’t mean that it is going to be recycled at the other end of affairs, the @Natures_Voice response was initially reassuring (put it in the recycling bin) …
… but then I saw the comment from Lucy Siegle underneath. Many of you will know Lucy from her excellent Observer column on sustainability – packed with common sense and good ideas – and if you don’t, then have a look at these recent columns The eco-guide to the Christmas walk and particularly relevant The eco-guide to New Year recycling. Lucy knows her stuff.
We quickly saw some @Natures_Voice back-tracking …
So it isn’t a case (please note Jeff!) of bunging your magazine wrapper in the recycling bin, it’s a case of taking them to particular supermarkets and then, as Lucy points out, it’s a bit unclear (unlike the wrappings themselves) what happens to them exactly.
So, I fished out the Private Eye wrapper, and the Natures Home wrapper, and the BBC Wildlife wrapper (which to be honest often sits there unopened for a few days) from the kitchen rubbish bin as I was going to Waitrose today (yes, I know, how typecast can one get!).
I found the bin for recycling plastic carrier bags very near the entrance (or exit) to Rushden Waitrose and saw that it said that plastic for recycling had to have a particular label. My three wrappers had no label. I was stumped. I would have asked at the information desk but there was a long queue and a journalist was ‘phoning me up (unfortunately not Lucy Siegle as she is a bit of a laugh and would probably have been able to tell me something interesting on this subject) but that meant I was working for a journalist for nothing for the next 40 minutes giving him the idiot’s guide (though he was no idiot) to the ills of driven grouse shooting. And then I had to be somewhere else. So I’m not a lot further forward in my search for the truth on whether, how and where to recycle plastic wrappings from magazines – but now I’m interested and so I will be looking into this more and more.
I have, though, counted up in my head the other magazines that come through the letter box and there are loads of them. There is a magazine from Cambridge University that I practically never read (and we get three of them – what an educated family!), another from my Cambridge college, British Birds, the Wildlife Trust magazine, Birdwatch, British Wildlife, Which, Society of Authors, the Mary Queen of Scots Society, the National Trust magazine, Bird Study and probably loads of others that I can’t immediately recall. Half of them I hardly read. Doesn’t look good does it? I bet your house is the same.
We all probably ought to be doing better. New Year resolution time? And what is government doing? I have no control over what my magazines are wrapped in – except not to get the magazines which probably is a sensible option with some of them. This is what governments are for – making societal decisions for the common good. You and I can’t easily choose the green-ness of our electricity (although progress is being made on that), nor do we have much of a say in a day-to-day sense in how our food is wrapped or what wraps the post that comes into our houses. That is why we have governments but this government believes in the market (which has rarely made anything more environmentally sustainable) and doesn’t believe in regulation (which has rarely failed to solve an environmental issue). I must check what Private Eye says on the matter.
[registration_form]
I’ve come up with a novel idea – use recycled (and recyclable) paper envelopes! I can’t see the advantage in using that non-recyclable form of plastic, except perhaps it’s slightly cheaper. For a conservation organisation as large as RSPB that shouldn’t matter. To change the subject, can’t someone convince the RSPB that being a “conservation, not animal welfare” body need not necessarily preclude campaigning against cruelty to animals. They could begin by supporting the calls to ban driven grouse shooting.
Our fantastic local chippy, Blacks of Halton, packages its food as follows:-
‘Your fish & chips are presented in an environmentally friendly biobox, manufactured from sugarcane pulp. As well as being a fantastic product for keeping your meal hotter and drier than its polystyrene cousins, these bioboxes are fully biodegradable and compostable. (In fact some of our customers use them as planters for seedlings!)”
I compost mine.
Also just bought some bananas from Sainsbury’s and, because of this blog, I read the label and found the plastic wrap can be recycled. Otherwise I would have just binned it. I will look at wrappings more carefully from now on.
My local authority (Sunderland) only takes type 1 and 2 plastics. Plastic bag and wrapper recycling at supermarkets also seems to vary a great deal by area. I collected masses of carrier bags etc a while back, which I eventually hauled to the local Sainbury’s, only to find that they have no provision at all.
Like Carole above, I try as much as possible to buy from suppliers that use reusable then compostable containers. Riverford vegbox deliveries are generally good that way.
Thanks for raising this issue. I’m encouraged (a little) by the recent media attention plastic pollution is finally getting.
We have been recycling magazine wrappers in Cambridge for over a year now. As the City Council says “almost all plastics now go in your blue bin. The only thing I don’t put in the blue bin are crisp packets and other plastic wrappers with silver linings. I have given up putting out a black bin and use a bin bag instead as I have so little items to go to the tip and that bag only goes out every two to three months.
Bruce – I’m not surprised that Cambridge is doing this quite well. East Northants is different.
You could try reading these magazines in pdf format on your screen (assuming they offer this option). You could also just cancel them, especially the ones you don’t actually read.
Adam – it’s a bit more complicated than that in the case of those that form part of a membership paqckage and which allegedly communicate with their members through their magazines.
And of course, folk need decent Broadband to be able to download large files. Rural areas are way behind with decent internet access and BT are frankly not interested as well as a record of failed attempts as it’s not sufficiently lucrative for them (yes, I’ve heard the news about Govt going to make them, ha ….).
But, please remember that some of us still like paper (preferably from sustainable sources etc.) and to read a physical book, magazine etc.
If we all wrote one letter (or email) a week to a supermarket, to our MP, to the Minister, then they would slowly start to realise the power of critical mass and grassroots community activism?
Well, not quite, Mark. I gave up my RSPB membership as a protest against the “rebranding” away from birds as the main focus. A nice young man (not from RSPB and he knew next to nothing about birds) phoned me to try to convince me to join again. I explained my reasons and he offered me membership WITHOUT the magazine. I said I would think about it and he should phone again the following day. I never heard from anyone but I could rejoin, not take the magazine and keep up via the website. Many organisations do this – my BTO magazine is now online and Neotropical Bird Club are moving that way. If enough of us offered to resign memberships unless magazines were eitehr not in plastic or were online, then the problem would disappear very quickly, I think!
Isn’t it great that the environmental ‘movement’ is moving onto things that really matter and things we can do something about. I just hope they don’t move Gove on while he is on his present form.
Last year, between Fugglestone and Knook I heard a piece on the wireless where Jim Alkali interviewed a eminent polymer scientist whose name I forget who said it was dumb to bury plastics or obscess about recycling them when the best fate was to finish extracting the fossil carbon energy from them. IIRC she regretted not focusing more on this aspect of polymer chemistry – but I think her opinion was that the toxicity and pollution hazards of incineration or pyrolysis could be overcome if only there was some effort – incentives for which have been lacking. Well I guess our favoured solution of just sending our hideous shiploads of plastic magazine covers and banana wrappers (who knew we needed them!) to India or China and their lucky people for disposal is now coming to an end as they rightly have decided they’ve had enough of our garbage so we might have to get our act together and sort it. So I was encouraged to see a report last year published by Zero Waste Scotland – “Plastics to oil products” – that assessed feasible processes that can accomplish the conversion of mixed plastic wastes to useful oils or alcohols and concluded that it can be done. I see no reason why the process developments should not be paid for by a very high rate of tax on plastics.
The environmental movement is not just the brand names who may take the lead through marketing on high profile or topical issues, activism can start at grassroots community level.
It’s simple ;), say no occasionally to things with excessive packaging. Remove it at the checkout and explain to the manager why, if you’re in a hurry save a batch up and parcel it up with a covering letter and return it to the store next time you go. Just imagine if that simple action took hold?
Communities can harness the power of social media, look at twitter for the volume of #plastic #pollution comments. Discover and offer simple solutions, perhaps the Govt/politicians and their industrialist paymasters will realise that there is a groundswell building across a whole landscape of issues ….
As for Mr Gove, the jury is still out on him as far as I’m concerned.
In a few weeks time a group of us hope to do a ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Safari’ in a local Tesco supermarket with a couple of MSPs/MPs and people from the press etc to look at examples of over packaging (Imperator and Chantenay carrots – both in a superfluous plastic tray except for the Chantenay carrots in the freezer section which don’t have a tray -!?!), look for examples of sensible packaging that puts the rest in bad light (i.e own brand toothpaste that doesn’t come with a little cardboard box) and how much recycled material is being resold to the public? The Tesco in question has a massive stock of toilet paper – but there’s only one brand of recycled bog roll and that’s probably made from high quality office paper which is wasted as bog roll. Paper can only be recycled so much and low quality paper (that could otherwise be difficult to reuse) is absolutely perfect for this ‘end use’ – pretty good and assured market for it! Of course that would be too much like economic and ecological good sense so it doesn’t happen – everyone should try and find ANY recycled toilet paper the next time they go to a supermarket – had a look in Falkirk Asda two days ago and there was absolutely none. As recycling rates have been slowly pushed up developing markets (in fact retaining them) has been neglected. We hope the ‘safari’ will be a good way of underling a lot of key issues and opportunities for improvement simultaneously, I emailed a complaint to Tesco about their over packaged carrots (and said the money saved should go to the poor sods who pick them) on the 30th of October and I’m still waiting for a response.
Just get the magazine company who print t to wrap it in clopane instead. It is time to demand UK produced cellophane , a pant asked product, compost able at home.
Stop using plastic, and start making the chemical industries get rid of their toxic waste themselves.
I think I get the gist, Michael, but I’m really interested to know what “a pant asked product” is. I think I probably need one!
I see Steve Ormerod has said on Twitter that “This is sector-wide problem and I hope the RSPB can show it’s typical leadership in demonstrating alternatives”. I pointed out that I’m pretty sure the RSPB used to send its magazine in a paper envelope. There may be a cost implication in moving back to paper envelopes, but the environmental benefit would be worth it, surely. I also suggested the RSPB find an alternative to plastic membership cards.
I cut up the paper envelopes from BTO mags for shopping lists and other reminders…. fridge covered in them! Brilliant scrap paper!
Saw an item on tv this am on recycling coffee cups. Difficult to get the plastic layer out of the paper, but they seem to do it by ‘floating’ off the plastic. So, what happens to the microscopic bits of plastic left in the water? End up in the oceans?
For a while now I’ve been putting some of the inevitable plastic wrappings I obtain from my shopping into the polythene recycling bins at either Morrisons or Sainsbury and fingers crossed they were the right type of plastic – I have worked in recycling and HATE contaminants. What I believe to be cellophane, and definitely shrink wrap, are excluded from this small, but still worthwhile recycling effort. The bigger issue though is should Nature’s Home not be available in an electronic form so that you don’t need to be sent the magazine at all? Friends of the Earth Scotland have the option of registering for an electronic version of their in house magazine and so bloody frustrating that more organisations don’t follow their example. And they really, really need to look at making Nature’s Home out of recycled fibre in this day and age – just not good enough to use the FSC fibre or ‘paper from sustainable sources’. May be a bit better than non FSC, but still not as good as recycled or best of all avoiding paper use altogether. IF recycled fibre was more expensive well that additional cost could be met by waste savings elsewhere – here’s a general example IF fewer books used smaller margins rather than the bloody ridiculous expanses of blank paper you get on hardbacks especially then they could probably afford to use recycled fibre – a double win less paper used and that which is used substantially less harmful ecologically/environmentally (reduce and replace).
The situation with China finally telling us to stick the contaminated dross we’ve been sending them for years as supposedly recyclable material where the sun doesn’t shine means that after more than a decade in the doldrums (and with the issue of plastic in the sea) reduce, reuse, recycle is finally going up the political agenda again when it should never have dropped down in the first place. The really bad fires in Portugal last year that left more than a hundred people dead and burnt out vast swathes of its countryside may very well have been due to the year on year expansion of the highly inflammable eucalyptus plantations that made Portugal the leading European source of cellulose for paper manufacture – an issue that has been there for decades now under the radar though for too many, but I suspect the fires have inevitably been held up as an example of Climate Change of course.
Time for the RSPB, Woodland Trust, Wildlife Trusts etc to get together and develop and promote a coherent and comprehensive policy of practicing and promoting reduce, reuse, recycle properly – at present it’s very inconsistent at best – including in some cases sponsorship deals for bottled water and non recycled toilet paper – both obscene wastes of natural resources.
Not just wrappings – I am trying to find eco-friendly alternatives to plastic wherever I can – small steps and not easy but I have bought and would recommend bamboo toothbrushes. They are also cheaper than plastic big name brands. I won’t mention the brand but the description is:-
“Made from bamboo, a natural cellulose fibre, they are 100 percent biodegradable, environmentally sustainable, and do not pollute the environment. The amazing growth and self-renewing ability of bamboo means that deforestation is not necessary either. Even our packaging is bio-degradable.
Think of how many plastic toothbrushes we get through. What did we use before plastic?
There may though be a downside of bamboo that I haven’t thought of – maybe destruction of tropical rain forest or something, or the freighting of the product on dirty diesel shipping. Life is too complicated. Still, we have to try.
Different Councils have different rules on recycling soft plastics. In Oxford, the Council prescribe a packaging test for soft plastics:
The Scrunch Test: ‘Scrunch’ a piece of plastic film in the hand, and if it STAYS ‘scrunched’, it can be recycled. If it unfolds, it cannot be recycled.
The Stretch Test: Stretch a piece of plastic film and if it stretches and doesn’t tear, it can be recycled. If, however, it doesn’t stretch – but tears – it cannot be recycled.
The problem with this foolproof method is that many plastic wrappers fall between staying scrunched and unfolding, and the usual way to get into many of them is to stretch them until they tear!
The City Council also advise that plastic bags can be recycled, but not thin plastic wrappings. So what, exactly, is the essential difference between those two? What is the definition of ‘thin’?
Also, plastic casings can be recycled, but not plastic CD and DVD casings!
The current crisis will have to result in country-wide industrial standards of recyclable and non-recyclable polymers with clearly identifiable markings. Maybe(?) in the future non-recyclable polymers should be subject to a ‘necessity’ test before being permitted into the consumer chain? That could restrict their disposal whilst also encouraging novel methods of safely reclaiming the materials?
What is ‘plastic’? https://www.thoughtco.com/plastic-chemical-composition-608930
Recycling and Recovery: http://www.plasticseurope.org/what-is-plastic/recycling-recovery.aspx
Too much emphasis on recycling both from the RSPB in their tweeted responses and in comments here. The three ‘R’s are supposed to represent a sequence – first you Reduce…then, if you simply cannot avoid a given piece of packaging, make it Reusable or Recycleable. It’s not good enough for the RSPB to move swiftly beyond the Reduce (avoid) test straight onto Recycle. The RSPB can take action now to Reduce the need for plastic packaging by a) offering a digital version of the magazine to whoever wants that option [not everyone will, but many people will be fine with a digital version, and to the extent that folks do, that’s a degree of Reduction]. Many popular magazines are now available in digital form as an option – The Economist, BirdWatch, the BirdLife magazine etc).
So, stop ‘exploring options’, RSPB, and show some belated leadership (it’s not even that, as they’re way behind on this).
I take the e-copy of BBC wildlife for my kindle. I can read it in the same format as the magazine or in a plain text version which does some random things with the photos. The magazine version includes the adverts, but they’re omitted from the plain text version.
I did ask ask the RSPB about an e-copy of Natures Home 12 months ago, but it’s not an option.
And that’s my point, I don’t have a recycling problem with my BBC Wildlife magazine- OK the e-copy is not like for like replacement for hard copy, but it is a plastic-free alternative. It’s a choice, that the RSPB doesn’t offer.
PS I have e-copies of some of Mark’s books – my only problem is getting him to sign a personal greeting on them. 🙂
My Plantlife magazine comes in a paper envelope. Unfortunately my local Council (North Yorkshire, which is pretty hopeless on recycling) excludes envelopes from the paper recycling 🙁
Shout out for Marine Conservation comic comes as is, with covers clipped together with very small plastic sticker. There are of course no inserts to fall out of the MC comic so presumably RSPB gets money from those leaflets and thus has to contain the magazine and its inner junk with a wrapper.