Charities and retailers are selling “eco-friendly” bamboo cups and children’s tableware containing plastic resin – despite warnings that green claims may be misleading and the products may pose a risk to health.
The bamboo “eco-cups” are promoted as helping to protect the planet, but are usually non-recyclable. Regulators warn the green claims may be tricking consumers into using products they believe to be sustainable.
You don’t say? Complicated products made in odd ways to meet dodgy goals may be dangerous? Lawks.
Why not just have paper cups then burn them when done?
I happen to have an eco-unfriendly cup in front of me that’d probably last for centuries unless I dropped it.
What’s wrong with old-fashioned pottery?
Don’t just about all eco friendly schemes do the opposite of what their deluded proponents intend? Electric cars being a clear example, supposedly zero emission and green but in reality far worse for the environment than a diesel that is capable of doing a quarter of a million miles.
If you drop pottery it would basically last forever too. Does anyone worry about it not degrading for years, like they moan about plastic, or does ceramic stuff not count cos it doesn’t leach anything nasty (I hope) and it’s basically made from rock, or at least mud, in the first place?
If someone tries to sell you something that’s ‘eco friendly’ but also ‘non-recyclable’ shouldn’t that be, oh, I dunno, a clue or something?
@ JuliaM
It certainly *is* a clue – so should trigger a *check this* response.
Needs checking, but can possibly be true (e.g. nuclear power stations) if it clearly saves more (in CO2 and/or pollution terms) over its lifecycle than it consumes in its manufacture … replacing structural plastic with carbon-fibre-reinforced struts in motor vehicles would meet this criterion but is not currently adopted due to monetary cost.
Too often a snake-oil-salesman trick.
John. “Structural plastic” & “carbon fibre reinforced rods” are the same thing. The resin holds the carbon fibres together is a plastic. On a technical note, the resins of plastic are often recyclable. The one’s used in carbon fibre aren’t. And there’s certainly a great deal more energy used in producing carbon fibre embedded resins. Which is why they’re so expensive.
If you’d ever had any experience in making either you’d know this.
As we only do 1 day a week in the office I just stick my metal cup I use for camping in my bag to use for coffee, pretty hard to break and recyclable
@ bis
There are structural plastics that are not reinforced with carbon fibre: the human race has been using hard plastics for structural jobs longer than it has had carbon fibre reinforcements. Conversely there are carbon fibre reinforced steel rods that are not plastic.
So you are mistaken.