Was Barry Vaughan’s thought-provoking letter regarding plastics, January 5, merely publicised to antagonise those who simply care about our planet or is he possibly from the camp of Donald Trump’s environmental head-in-the-sand thinking?
I am saddened with either.
No one questions that plastics have a place in the modern world, we all use them but without question our world is now drowning in a waste product with few facilities to recycle or that can not be recycled at all. It is simply unsustainable in its present form.
Mr Vaughan appears to believe we can simply use domestic plastics time and time again.
I’m sure his council refuse collectors in West Alvington are delighted at the empty general waste bin he offers every other week.
Perhaps advise us all on how to reuse plastic waste. This would be far more constructive than writing scathing letters to us ‘attention seekers’.
Our landfills are clogged up, our oceans awash with ground- up microplastics which are already entering our food chain – let alone the death caused to marine life.
Where does Mr Vaughan suggest we put so much needless, single-use plastics in future? No doubt he can only offer ‘in space’ !
The proactive campaign to ban, single use plastics, to question our over use of non essential packaging, to erase non fully bio-degradable plastics is one we all have to embrace without question.
There are alternatives being developed and funding needs to go to environmentally ethical plastic alternatives.
Fully biodegradable plastics are being developed and taxing products which blatantly contravene ethical practice will fund this necessary science.
I and many other ‘blinkered’ individuals try our best to clean our shorelines of a mass of plastic waste .
More and more people are becoming pro-active in cleaning our environment and I would cherish the day I go to our local beach and fail to find a single scrap of waste.
Any action to erase the need to beach clean can only be good.
To merely pass the world’s inability to recycle plastic waste as ‘idle irresponsibility’ is another way of saying ‘it’s someone else’s problem’.
Mr Vaughan, become part of the solution, not the problem.
Join us cleaning waste from our beautiful coastline and finding ways to reduce it.
Steve Broad
Fore Street, Aveton Gifford