The average person uses 18 throwaway plastic plates and 37 single-use knives, forks and spoons each year, according to ministers, while the durability of plastic litter means it kills more than a million birds and 100,000 sea mammals and turtles every year around the world.
In order to justify a ban in England on such single use plastics it is – sorry, should be – necessary to show a link between the two things. Between plastics use in England and killing babbie sea turtles in the Pacific.
The reason they don’t bother is because no link can be found. Better to use the perversion of logic in order to gain power, eh?
I’ve often wondered how my Tesco bag got into the Great Pacific Gyre. Then it turns out the gyre was filmed in a Thai harbour, carefully clipped, and the bag looks a helluva lot like fishing gear and bits off boats.
Weird thing is when caught in a lie they just skip to the next one, no regrets, no apologies.
Name and shame this average person.
What do they propose we use instead, our fingers?
’ A public consultation will launch in the autumn and the ban could be in place in a couple of years.’
If the ban is going ahead regardless what on earth is the consultation for..?
The only two things which need connecting are ‘government’ and ‘sub-optimal outcomes’. The use of plastic has increased since the introduction of a charge for plastic bags
Hopefully this “ban” will be a gentleman’s agreement with shops and they’ll be people still flogging them online. Or maybe set up an eBay shop that’s in Northern Ireland (but not really).
What do they expect us to do instead? Own 30 china plates and stainless steal cutlery for the occasional BBQ? Drive home from the beach with dirty plates rather than putting them in a bin?
You know something I’m nostalgic for sometimes? The optimistic future that I grew up in, of government trying to make the world better: closing down railways and building roads, knocking down crappy old buildings, jetting off to see the world. Yeah, Concorde didn’t exactly work, those new concrete buildings were often bad, but at least the intention was some betterment of life.
Entertaining to see they’re anxious to ban the solution, the export of scrap plastic.
But perhaps we should invent a time machine and go back to stop those awful people who invented pottery and left all those broken plates around. And those terrible tells, ghastly mounds of garbage that the archaeologists love to dig into.
Of course we could go further back and kill all the dinosaurs. That dreadful fossilised shit. And all those fossilised bones. Then there’s the plants that left all that rubbish we call coal. And indeed oil.
In fact it’d probably be better to go right back to the beginning and exterminate all life. But think of the avalanches from eroding mountains. More trash.
A nice simple supernova and horrid earth would never have polluted the universe.
I’ve often wondered how my Tesco bag got into the Great Pacific Gyre.
Partly cos the stuff carefully sorted into the green bags and the blue bins was crammed into empty shipping containers heading back east, to be “recycled” there.
The plastic ended up in the ocean because the eco nutters in the west decided it couldn’t be burnt, or put into landfill, it had to be ‘recycled to save the planet’.
But we couldn’t recycle it at a reasonable cost (or in any fashion said eco nutters would allow), so sent it abroad to some nice foreign peeps who saw a business opportunity, but who, when realising they couldn’t deal with it and make money, chucked it in the rivers and thence on to the sea.
In situations like this, Brent Spar always comes to mind – Shell “we’ll sink it” – Greenpeace, WWF, Friends of the Earth “you can’t do that, think of the environmental impact”, Shell “OK, we’ll cut it up on land”. Later…..GP, WWF, FoE “You shouldn’t have cut it up on land you should’ve sunk it”.
PJF and Adolff are correct.
The eco-scum created this problem shipping plastic waste that could have been burned or landfilled here to 3rd world crooks who threw it into the sea.
So now our lives are to be made worse by the same eco-scum who caused the problems in the first place.
McDonalds and other chains are big enough to tell Johnson’s gang to fuck off and make it stick.
Its like I keep saying. Either we start defying these cunts edicts, “law” or not, or our lives will be made worse and worse.
As the sainted Vic Reeves once rmearked ‘82.5% of statistics are made up on the spot’
I demand to see the evidence
I for one haven’t used a single use/throwaway plate or single use cutlery in over 18 months as I haven’t gone anywhere to use them
You know something I’m nostalgic for sometimes?
The old gas-lampposts with the prongs for the lamplighter’s ladder, over which we could throw a rope and hang a few politicians.
I can’t remember the last time that I used a plastic fork. Disposable plates are made of paper, I don’t use them either.
Well if we’re all going to tell the truth, I’m damned if I can remember the last time I used a plastic plate, or cutlery.
I know!! They can bitch instead at the way I waste water by simply drenching my dishes with it to rinse them, instead of saving them up and putting them in the dishwasher. Not that I’ve got a dishwasher.
Re the “I can’t remember the last time” comments: as usual, this stuff ends up targeting the poor (who would eat more fast food), who everyone ostensibly cares about so much.
As for the rich… two weeks ago I was up in the Alps and saw a couple sat in the middle of a meadow with a foldup wooden table, parasol, napkins, glasses and champagne. No plastics there…