Of Plastic Bags And Milk Bottles

There is a post doing the rounds on Facebook (which I think originated in Australia) that is critical of Greta Thunberg and her generation for their concerns that are predicated on what we, the whole human race, are doing to the planet. If you’ve not seen it, here it is (and if it's difficult to read here, I've added the text at the end of this blog).

You may agree with what Greta Thunberg and others are saying about climate change or you may not, that is not really the concern of this blog. What the Facebook post provoked for me was a sort of nostalgia for the period the author of it was writing about, as a lot of it chimes with my childhood.

It’s true that back in the 1960s and 1970s, there was barely a plastic bottle to be seen as Coca Cola only began selling their product in plastic PET bottles in 1978. Prior to that, we bought soft drinks in glass bottles and generally took them back to the shops for a refund of the ‘deposit’ we had paid when we bought them. 

When plastic bottles were introduced, the idea of recycling them never crossed our minds, it wasn't possible anyway – they went straight into the normal waste – and it wasn’t until 2003 that the Household Waste Recycling Act was passed, which required local authorities in England to provide every household with a separate collection of at least two types of recyclable materials by 2010.[1] Today I have a recycling bin that is about twice the size of my normal one.

Coca Cola's first PET bottle.

According to RECOUP, one of the UK’s leading authorities on plastics packaging recycling, in 2014 60% of PET plastic bottles in household waste were being collected for recycling - in 2001 this figure was just 3%. Plastic bottles are not the problem, people are. Plastic bottles are little more of a problem than glass ones, except that glass bottles are reused rather than recycled and recycling plastic bottles requires a process that needs much more energy than washing and reusing glass. But, as recyclable does not mean recycled, the problem is us, human beings, who still dispose of 40% of plastic bottles into the general waste, where they end up in landfill.

I remember my Mum going shopping with a large hessian bag, into which the greengrocer tipped loose carrots, potatoes, parsnips, and the like. All of these now come pre-packed in plastic bags in supermarkets these days, and there are plastic bags available to take home the loose ones. There was an almighty furore when a charge for single-use plastic bags was introduced in 2015, and if the intention was to wean us off plastic bags, it didn’t work. In 2018 1.5billion so-called ‘bags for life’ were sold in the UK; the average household bought 54 that year. 

The countries shown in green have banned plastic bags.

Bags for life have become as disposable as the old single-use ones and campaigners such as Greenpeace have suggested that such bags either be banned or that the price be increased to around 70p (when Ireland introduced a 70-cent charge, sales fell by 90%).  The idea that a country could totally ban plastic bags might seem unworkable to many people, however, there are 74 countries worldwide that have banned plastic bag usage. If plastic bags were either banned or priced prohibitively (let’s say £5), we would all find alternatives, but at present there is no incentive for us to do so.

My parents never owned a car; I walked to school every day of the thirteen years I was in full-time education and I would take issue with the blame that the person who originated this Facebook post attaches to five to sixteen-year-olds for being taken to school in Mummy’s 4x4, because it is Mummy and her generation who own and drive these vehicles and decided to take their children to school in them.

It is equally disingenuous to implicate McDonalds and Burger King’s plastic toys, because although there’s really no reason (marketing purposes aside) why a Happy Meal has to include a plastic frippery, then if plastic toys are the problem, then there are more appropriate targets than the fast food companies. These days however, there are toy manufacturers who are moving towards the production of sustainable and ethical products. Neither McDonalds nor Burger King contribute to the problem of the waste from polystyrene food boxes, however, since (drinks apart), all of their food comes in paper or cardboard containers, which are either recyclable or biodegradable. In fact, most fast food from chain restaurants now comes in cardboard or paper, it only seems to be small and independent outlets that continue to use polystyrene. It seems to me that few teenagers frequent the food retailers that use polystyrene, preferring the big chains that have almost exclusively eschewed that material.

My abiding memory of newspaper being used to wrap food was cold food rather than hot, as shopkeepers would wrap up blocks of ice cream (which then came in carboard containers) in it to keep it from melting while you took it home. Today a litre of ice cream will come in a plastic tub; recyclable if not always recycled.

The milkman however, is apparently making a comeback. More than 70,000 new households signed up for milk deliveries from Milk & More last year. Back in my youth, everyone had their milk delivered to their doorstep; supermarkets only began selling milk in the 1990s when the milk industry was deregulated. Glass bottle usage for milk, which had accounted for 94% of the market in 1975, fell to just 4% by 2012. Unfortunately, my memories of the milkman were that all too often he didn’t deliver until after we had left for work or school, which meant that even when we had enough milk  for our morning tea and cornflakes (and boy, did we seem to drink a lot more of the stuff back then than we do today, we had a pint delivered every day, I don’t buy much more than a pint a week now!) the bottle would be on the doorstep, heating away quite nicely in the sun, leaving a rather unappetising pint for when you got home. That is if it hadn’t been stolen (we had to ask our milkman to hid ours behind a bush at one stage), or if birds hadn’t pecked through the lid to get to the cream on top. In the interests of the environment, I would happily go back to having a milk deliveries, although at 95p for a pint of organic milk, Milk & More are significantly more expensive than your average supermarket, and with a one pint per week order, I’m not sure it’s worth my while (or theirs).

It may seem ironic – and lacking in self-awareness – that the original Facebook post is ostensibly from a member of the generation that introduced plastic bottles, stopped using milkmen, began buying food in polystyrene containers, brought in single-use plastic bags, and was in the forefront of driving gas-guzzling 4x4s, but then waxes nostalgic for all the things that it criticises the younger generation for preaching about and apparently wishing we could return to. But I rather think that that was the point.

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[1] https://www.proskips.co.uk/when-did-recycling-start-in-the-uk

Footnote: Facebook post in full:

It’s hilarious, all these school kids preaching to us oldies that we ruined the planet! Back in the 60’s and 70’s and 80's not a plastic bottle to be seen it was all glass that were reused, pop bottles taken back to the shop. No plastic bags, loose food was brown paper bags, all sweets were bought in 1/4lb put in a paper bag. Mothers used shopping trolleys to carry heavy stuff or used a linen bag. You walked to school from 5yrs to 16yrs not jumping into mummy’s or daddy’s 4+4. No McDonald’s or Burger King plastic toys, no polystyrene food boxes for you to litter the streets with, we used newspapers to wrap our hot food in. Our milk was delivered at 5 am 6 days a week in glass bottles by a milkman who drove an electric vehicle! Holidays were in a caravan in Britain not an aeroplane to far off destinations. So I think these youngsters need to take a look in a recycled mirror and think was it my wasteful generation who are ruining the planet.