Rubbish is big business and bigger news this week. Whilst the UK Climate Change bill makes its way through the commons, Britons are also being threatened with “pilot” trials (according to DEFRA), paying for the amount of rubbish we have taken away – obviously not including recycled rubbish.

A laudable scheme, since perhaps payment is the only way to jog our memories to reduce the amount of plastic, packaging and other non-recyclable rubbish that comes through our homes each day. The interesting thing is the governments political nervousness at introducing such a scheme – prompting Charles Clover in The Daily Telegraph to comment, “few in the environment department are in any doubt something will have to be done about the amount of rubbish Britons throw away if the nation is to get a grip on climate change. Not grasping that has made Brown’s No 10 look, well, rather brown.“.

A good place to start in the war against rubbish is food packaging. About 1/5th of what we throw away, or 2/3’s of our packaging waste, comes from the Food we buy. Moving to reusable shopping bags, buying locally sourced and less packaged food rather than fro a supermarket could therefore make a huge difference. For more info check out our new book Food. What are we really eating?

What a load of rubbish?

One thought on “What a load of rubbish?

  • 21 November, 2007 at 1:27 pm
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    Interesting that you should associate the financial cost of rubbish collection to “reminding” the consumer of their responsibilities. This is just so vile a concept – especially since it should be the manufacturer’s burden to bear. They, after all, leave us with little choice – and tackling the source of plastic pollution would have to involve them, primarily, changing their packaging materials. Why is it always the little people who are required to bare the financial cost of any progressive programme, when our hard earned tax is already paying for innovation methods to reduce environmental impacts?

    Surely you see the gross ethics in practice here?

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