Plastic straws and other items

As I said previously, on another similar thread, the club isn't quite leading the way yet......

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Particularly with bottles I am more for strict controls, rather than outright bans. Things such as reasonably large deposits and making the drinks manufactures responsible for there recycling. I mean actual recycling, not just sending them to the third world for somebody else to deal with. If we moved back to the use of glass in place of plastic there would inevitably be more transport pollution as the weights involved would be a lot greater. That would not be a reasonable trade off in my opinion.

Some years ago the talk was about a wonder 'plastic' which would after a year or so degrade naturally in UV light to leave only naturally occurring harmless chemicals behind and a residue which could be used as a growing medium. I think such products though, due to their degradable qualities, did not quite fit the recyclable model which was being 'pushed'. May be we need a total and creative rethink on all issues to do with materials we use in our lives.

In a few months we'll be touring Germany and every time we enter a supermarket there will be Germans who will be putting their old plastic bottles, and glass ones, into a machine in order to receive a credit note that they will use at the checkout. Been doing it for years, but heh, we don't like being told what to do. Stupid.

Thirty three years ago we were on Camping Esterel in France, and my son and his friend used to go around collecting plastic bottles to put them in a machine.  It wasn't called recycling in those days, but they got a few cents per bottle, and each day's collection kept them in air hockey, table football, and an ice cream each for an evening.  

We have a similar machine outside our local Intermarche, where you put in plastic bottles in one slot, and the plastic tops in another, and out come the coins in return.

It seems we have quite a lot in common with our cousins across the big pond when it comes to stupidity! Is it that they are like us or we are like them?

I've been in modern. environmentally friendly countries where only human waste, what comes out of our bodies, is flushed down toilets. That may just be a tad too far for some of us 'lazy' Brits mind but such 'foreign' matter cost us many millions and only helps to destroy the Eco systems we enjoy.

Be interested to know what countries you mean?

I'd like to know whether they really are "modern" or just don't have proper sewerage systems?

The problem is not the plastic but the irresponsible public.

Plastic, (as with guns) isn't dangerous by itself.

Didn't think I'd need to explain this one! But countries all over the world have proper modern sewage systems and their populations do not abuse them. It seems that we Brits have a problem, many of us believe that the toilet is a porthole out of our lives for all sorts of plastic products, rubber products, materials, fats and a whole host of other things. Our primitive systems, much of which is pre Victorian were in place prior to much of the stuff we apparently flush out of sight was invented or even thought about. The systems struggle to sort these materials out from that organic matter that they are really intended for and cause millions of pounds worth of rectification and maintenance. If we adopted the habits of other countries around the World whose systems are more modem and ecologically friendly and instead of thinking out of sight out of mind and if we just did the right thing then things would improve. Ask the surfers, the swimmers, ask those who beach comb or go for walks along the strand line, it appears we really are disgusting, unfortunately the evidence is all around us.