Plastic Fantastic
Move over asbestos, plastic has become the bogeyman of the materials world, with the damage it does to the environment in the public consciousness now like never before. Eight million metric tonnes of the stuff gets thrown into our oceans every year, causing a devastating effect on wildlife.
But to be fair to plastic, it’s not its fault that it’s become so prolific – it’s us humans that can’t be trusted. An invaluable material for some many essential parts of life (imagine an operating theatre without plastics), it’s our misuse of its qualities, especially for short-lived and disposable tasks, that has got us into this mess. Yes, there have been significant gains, like the charge for plastic bags and the ban on microbeads (those tiny exfoliating fragments found in many face washes), but we’ve got a long way to go in terms of changing human behaviour so that less of it ends up in the ground or the ocean.
And here’s were the clever Norwegians come in. With the knowledge that 500 billion plastic water bottles are disposed of worldwide per year and that it’s human nature to actually do the right thing for the planet when there’s a financial reward rather than just a fuzzy feeling, the county has a recycling deposit scheme that doles out cash in exchange for empties. Every can or bottle you buy has a deposit, usually around 1 krone, and when you take them back to the store en masse and feed them into a reverse vending machine, you’re rewarded with a voucher. More than 95% of all bottles under the scheme are returned, reducing the amount of plastic going into landfill drastically.
Imagine if the UK adopted the same scheme, or even more exciting if supermarkets created returnable and reusable packaging. The ability is there, it’s just up to us to demand it.
Read more about Norway’s plastic recycling scheme in this Norwegian Arts feature here.
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