LET'S not forget the war on plastic during this war against the pandemic. A new report published in Science Advances which looks at plastic waste in the United States, showed that, alarmingly, the UK was the world’s second biggest generator of plastic waste per capita. The country only trailed behind the US for the amount of plastic waste generated per person.

I can’t say that’s much of a surprise. It often seems to me that I am caught in an endless torrent of plastic guff, coming at me from all parts of my consumer life, like some unstoppable monster. The report I mention looked at the state of plastic use in 2016, but it is showing no sign of abating – the opposite, during this time of pandemic. We may be now, finally, buying fewer plastic bottles of water and using less carrier bags, but our supermarket shelves are awash with plastic and our streets littered with discarded disposable masks.

Another recent study showed a stalling in progress on legislation, globally, around plastic, and a projected increase in global plastic packaging of 5.5 percent over this year as a result, largely, of the pandemic response. Earlier this year Surfers Against Sewage drew attention to an explosion of plastics on beaches and rivers.

Scotland could ban single-use plastic next year

I’ve seen some of that on my own local beaches. And at the same time, I’ve wondered where is all our recycling waste going? Those of us who watched Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s War On Plastic looked in horror at the footage of the waste we pack off to non-OECD countries – and it’s still continuing. An analysis of official government trade data by Unearthed shows that the UK sent 64,786 tonnes of plastic waste to non-OECD countries in the first seven months of 2020.

This is why it’s all the more important that the Scottish Government’s consultation on banning plastic straws and food containers leads to an effective piece of legislation. But these straws and containers are just the tip of the plasticberg. We need more legislation around all the different plastics in our lives. And we need to change our approach to resources – to fully develop what’s been called the circular economy, as advocated by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation.

A report, published by the foundation earlier this week, identifies the potential for improvement in policies governing plastic packaging It cites the Breaking the Plastic Wave report which has shown that a comprehensive circular economy approach for the plastics sector has the potential to reduce the annual global volume of plastics entering our oceans by over 80 percent. We need to get fiercer in this war on waste, halt the unstoppable plastic monster.

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