Fran Brady, Quaker representative on the ECI committee shares these thoughts with us:
There is a lot of emphasis on what we can recycle in our green bins. From time to time there are new guidelines as to what can and cannot be placed in the green bin. An important question we might dwell on is how to reduce waste at source rather than seeing recycling as a prime way to be environmentally friendly. The hierarchy is REDUCE: REUSE: RECYCLE. Let’s see how we can starve both our landfill and recycle bins especially from plastics.
Plastics are known to be one of the most detrimental components of our modern waste. They are never-ending and when they leave us they do not biodegrade but persist in our oceans or wherever they may be.
Their assiduous presence in our oceans is lethal to marine life whether through ingestion or through entanglement which leads to suffering and starvation.
What can we do to avoid plastics?
- Buy products which are unwrapped or are in bio-degradable packaging.
- Buy food from local farmers markets. As well as saving food miles and strengthening local food enterprises packaging can be eliminated.
- Bring your own shopping bags.
- Look out for places where you can fill your own containers of dry food, such as Small Changes, Drumcondra Road (opposite Clonliffe Road) or Dublin Food Coop in Newmarket Square Dublin 8. This type of outlet is gaining popularity, albeit slowly
- Bring your own reusable cup instead of accepting one-use cups. This particular practice was simpler pre-COVID. Hopefully with people preference it might become widespread again.
- Make Your Own Fabric Bags for vegetables – this also recycles old fabrics.
- The government is developing a Deposit Return System (DRS). VOICE is involved with the Departmental working group to ensure DRS is successfully implemented. DRS places a levy on each plastic bottle and can sold, which the purchaser can redeem when they return their empty container to a shop. Experience in other countries demonstrated that DRS guarantees over 90% collection rate of recyclable materials, thus negating the need for virgin materials to produce new containers.
- Plastic bags, plastic bottles and plastic cups are obvious but what of the hidden plastics in the microbeads in cosmetics and toiletries. Fauna & Flora International raised the alarm about microbeads in 2012. It has been working with the cosmetics industry ever since to persuade them to phase out these ingredients. https://www.fauna-flora.org/news/
- Many cosmetic and beauty products still contain microplastic ingredients, such as polyethylene, which make their way into waterways. An app called Beat the Microbead 3.0 can scan products. http://www.beatthemicrobead.org/
- Microfibres from synthetic clothes such as acrylic, nylon and polyester are among the “invisible” sources of ocean pollution is. Microfibres escape during laundry sessions and make their way to the sea.
- For ways to stop microfibre pollution see http://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/pft/2017/3/2/15-ways-to-stop-microfiber-pollution-now which include:
- Washing synthetic clothes less frequently and for a shorter duration.
- Filling washing machine. Washing a full load results in less friction between the clothes and fewer fibres released.
- Switching to liquid laundry soap. Laundry powder “scrubs” and loosens more microfibers.
- Using a colder wash setting. Higher temperature can damage clothes and release more fibres.
- Avoid buying synthetic clothes
Avoiding plastics can be challenge but each action performed to avoid plastic is helping to change the mindset that we cannot get it eliminated from our everyday.