It is not just businesses that need to change, government also needs to use its power to change the system. “We need the Government to stop tinkering with measures that create tiny insignificant changes and tackle single use waste in the way they finally tackled smoking, helping to make our public spaces litter free as well as smoke free. That requires putting in place systems which significantly disincentivise single-use and makes reuse a convenient and viable option for both businesses and consumers.” (1)
This year we returned (by train) to Wengen in Switzerland where we had not been for four years. We noticed a few changes – shops that had closed (sadly the pharmacy) and hotels that were being rebuilt. But most surprising was the arrival of take-away coffees. There are now at least three outlets where you can buy a take-away coffee – at the news kiosk by the station, at the Co-op, and from a new small coffee shop in the main street. Whereas before people bought a coffee in a real cup and sat down to drink it, now they could buy a coffee and walk the streets with it in a throw-away cup.
With that comes the environmental cost of making single -use cups, collecting them after use and – provided they don’t end up in landfill – recycling them. Like buying water in a plastic bottle we have been sucked into a throw away culture on the false premise that it is both cheap and convenient.
We can begin to change that culture by opting for a ‘sit down coffee in a cup’ and where that is not possible, carrying and using a ‘keep-cup’.
Recently I was chatting with a friend about the number of items which have since our youth become single use items (this is not to say I am either old nor that everything was so much better in the good old days!). But things like wet wipes did not exist – instead there would be a cloth or maybe even a damp flannel in plastic bag for a journey. A kitchen towel meant a hand towel: washable dish clothes and floor clothes were for wiping up spills. Hankies were cotton and washable and came with embroidered designs or printed patterns. And I even remember from my honeymoon having a paper envelope with my room number, in which I placed my cotton serviette at the end of the meal so that I could use it again at the next meal.
Surely laundering is better than creating waste that is either burnt or ends up in landfill?
The Green Tau 