A greener, cleaner future
It’s time to stop bashing the plastics, says Cromwell Polythene Managing Director James Lee.
This month we’ll be showcasing our extensive portfolio of sacks, bags and speciality products for the storage and collection of waste and recyclables at RWM 2018.
We hope that you’ll be able to visit us on our stand 5P32 and find out more about our products, which are designed to make the world cleaner, greener and more economical. On display will be our lightweight LowCO2
t range, which uses
less material to achieve the same performance standards as conventional sacks and are packaged in smaller cartons. This means the volume of plastic used is minimised, as are the carbon emissions during production and transport. Less storage space is required too.
Our range also includes waste and recycling sacks and all shapes and sizes of bin liners, compactor sacks, UN approved clinical waste sacks, and compostable liners. That’s in addition to food-grade bags, kerb-side recycling bags, woven sacks, disposable personal protective equipment, as well as film, sheeting and tubing.
Plastics recycling will be a hot topic for discussion at RWM, since plastic has been having a hard time in the media recently. It is, however, essential for modern life, and, if manufactured and used responsibly, plastic can benefit the environment and continue to enrich our lives.
I’ll be speaking on this issue at RWM on 12 September in the Recycling Theatre from 13.15-13.45, in a talk themed ‘Time to stop bashing the plastics’. Through the media, people are associating plastic with anti-social behaviour (littering) and bad waste management, and there’s no denying it is both a problem today and a current and future threat to the environment.
The bigger issue though is climate change, and the human impact on climate change will be accelerated if we reject modern lightweight plastic materials. The problems of plastic litter and marine pollution are very real and need tackling, but they are the result of littering and/or poor waste management, meaning the leakage of valuable resources is caused by lack of, or inadequate, infrastructure, not something inherent in the material.
Switching from plastic to alternative materials, such as glass or cardboard, is often suggested to be ‘greener’. Looking at these options, glass is much heavier and so transport costs and emissions are much greater – a typical truckload of empty glass jars weighs 19 tonnes more than the plastic equivalent. Glass is also more fragile and can lead to further wastage.
32 | FEATURE
As for bags, we’ve already seen that ‘bags for life’ may not be the solution. ‘Why can’t we return to paper bags?’ is an often-heard refrain. Paper bags are widely available, but let’s not kid ourselves that they just grow on trees. The energy used and associated emissions means that paper bags have a global warming potential four times greater than a single use plastic bag, and recycling paper uses 91% more energy than plastic.
Used properly, plastic will continue to offer a convenient and cost-effective solution to many of modern day life’s issues, especially in the cleaning industry, allowing the transport and storage of cleaning materials as well as of waste.
In my opinion, rather than taxes or bans on plastic packaging, which punish everyone, governments should be concentrating efforts on reinforcing existing environmental regulations, working with overseas counterparts to improve waste management and recycling infrastructure. At home, we should increase penalties and fines for individuals and corporations who flout the law and contribute to the problem; revenues from fines could help pay for clean-ups.
Banning all single use plastic items (it’s not just plastic packaging washing up on the beaches) would have tremendous disadvantages to modern living and would create huge inefficiencies in the supply chain, with associated costs to the environment. We need to clean up our act to reduce littering but at the same time fully consider the consequences of the alternatives, which could lead us to burn through resources faster and accelerate climate change.
www.cromwellpolythene.co.uk twitter.com/TomoCleaning
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78
