I haven’t delved into Bird Study yet as I was distracted by its wrapper. It’s so unusual for a magazine to arrive chez moi apparently wrapped in plastic that I have been scouring the wrapper, the journal and the bit of paper inside the wrapper to find something telling me that it’s all recyclable really. But I have failed to find it.
Dear BTO, is this a plastic wrapper and is it recyclable and if not can you please tell us what your plans are? Thanks.
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I think the problem is that it is a formal scientific journal and not a mmbers magazine. The movement to switch that sort of publication over to a different packaging has, I suspect, been a lot slower. Libraries will continue to subscribe if its a journal they want, regardless of its packaging. The smaller number of individual subscribers probably dont count for much. Can you switch to getting the journal electronically? I gte my bird study that way. You might need to ask Taylor Francis rather than/as well as BTO
But even a lot of the compostaable plastics are a problem as the type of machines used in the municipal compost facilities are designed to shred through twigs, bones etc and not floppy plastic, and get clogged with these sort of wrappers… and domestic compost is often not hot enough. We are currently experimenting with how long some of the recent ones take to break down.
For extra irony they could have put an albatross on the cover.
I don’t know what the circulation of Bird Study is but it can’t be that high. The BTO don’t have infinite resources so perhaps you’re being a little hard on them.
Stuart – the world doesn’t have infinite resources so perhaps the BTO and their publisher are being a bit hard on it. Or perhaps not – I was asking.
The wrapper probably is recyclable if you can put it in with other polythene that can go in the plastic bag recycling bins you get at Sainsburys, Morrisons and they used to have at Tesco. I suspect that wee bits of polythene are among the least problematic types of plastic recycling as long as they’re clean – being very thin any contaminant on them constitutes a large proportion of their volume which is not good and is why food smears are a pain for all plastics, but especially films. The good thing is this won’t be an issue with magazine wrappings.
A number of shops have started popping up locally where you can take your own containers to refill with rice, pasta, pulses, grains, spices, herbs etc which is great, but might not displace as much packaging as is wished as much of it only came in simple polythene bags anyway – but it’s a good start. Of course the very best option for magazines is to receive them electronically which means the heavy environmental and ecological cost of paper is avoided too – yes the internet uses a lot of energy, but so does paper production as well as create pollution from chemical processing and cause the loss of wildlife habitats. We could start ‘rewilding’ plantations if we reduce paper use and that would be a wonderful thing to aim for.
Aldi now sell a reusable loose produce bag made from recycled plastic bottles – shame they don’t sell much loose produce to use it with. I was at their check out the other day when I saw the lady in front of me had bought a shrink wrapped pack of twelve bottled waters which made my heart sink, then noticed she had a pepper in one of the reusable bags too. Maybe this anomaly shows a bit of effort raising public awareness about the insanity of buying water (!!??!!) could be more effective than we might think. This would certainly be something that would make a big difference in reducing plastic waste.
True about wrappers going into the recycling, in MANY areas, but each district is different……. but now, in South Cambs, we have been told not to put plastic wrappers in if they ARE compostable, btu also not to but htem in th egreen waste… so feel I cannot win with that one!
My wife’s first question when it dropped through the door the other day. And of course I don’t know the answer either. I suppose that it’s good that it now stands out in the crowd, though we’ve also managed to diminish that crowd over the last year, mainly by getting rid of unwanted brochures and the like from companies where we’ve bought stuff and failed to tick the right boxes.
My Shooting Times arrived in its first paper wrapper today, int’ that brilliant ?.
…and, iv’e just noticed the World Land Trust logo on it, thus demonstrating shootings improving
green credentials.